Energy (and Other) Events is a weekly mailing list published most Sundays covering events around the Cambridge, MA and greater Boston area that catch the editor's eye.
Hubevents http://hubevents.blogspot.com is the web version.
If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Energy (and Other) Events email gmoke at world.std.com
What I Do and Why I Do It: The Story of Energy (and Other) Events
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2013/11/what-i-do-and-why-i-do-it.html
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Event Index - full Event Details available below the Index
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Monday, November 18
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12pm Transportation System Resilience, Extreme Weather, and Climate Change
12pm "What We Don't Know About Snow: Overview of the NASA Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) Cold season Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx)"
12pm Using System Dynamics to Support Startups, Stimulate the Economy, and Create More Jobs
12:15pm (Not) Getting from Us to We: Expertise as a roadblock to change in U.S. environmental organizations
1:30pm Checking Under the Hood: Defining the Legacy of Trayvon Martin, from Conversation to Legislation
3:30pm A New Industrial Policy in France: Talk with Arnaud Montebourg, French Minister for Economic Regeneration
4pm Modeling Human Communication Dynamics
4pm Wearable Robots: A Grand Challenge in Robotics
4pm "Emerging Modes of Knowledge Expression: humanities, the sciences and the re-enlightenment project"
5:30pm Noam Chomsky: What is Anarchism?
6pm Models of Organizing in the Arts Ecosystem
7pm The App Generation
7pm Science & Cooking: Fermentation — When Rotten Goes Right
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Tuesday, November 19
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Architecture Boston
12:30pm Science fiction or reality? A discussion of near-term ethical, legal, and societal issues in robotics
4:15pm Systems Based on Large-area Electronics: Bringing Electronics to Life through Extensive Interfacing with the Physical World
4:15pm Fifty Years after The Feminine Mystique: What’s Changed at Home and at Work?
4:30pm The MIT Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar: Was the Arab Spring Just a Moment?
5:30pm Tapping Into the Wisdom of Traditional Farmers: Sustainably Growing Food in the Face of Climate Change and Water Scarcity
5:30pm Third Annual Transportation Networking Night
6pm Eat What You Want: The Intuitive Approach
6pm Boston Gaming November Demo Night
6pm Sustainable Business Network Massachusetts B2B
6:30pm Majora Carter
6:30pm Snarky Science @ CafeSci Boston
7pm Greenport Forum: Hubway in Central Cambridgeport: Let’s Talk About It
7pm Pricing Carbon: The Role of the Free Market in Solving the Climate Crisis
8pm Lone Survivor (FREE advance screening)
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Wednesday, November 20
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Architecture Boston
10am Nuclear Proliferation, Preventive War, and a Leader's Decision to Intervene
12pm High Speed Rail in the Private Sector – Some Lessons
12pm What if the Greensboro Four Had Twitter? Social Justice in the Age of Social Media and Hip-Hop
12pm Human Rights, Democracy and Support for the Use of Force: An Experimental Approach
12:15pm Your Brain on Food: The Neurocognitive Basis of Eating Behavior
3pm Media Lab Conversations Series: Khalida Brohi
3:45pm Gas Hydrates, Climate Change, and Ocean-Atmospheric Methane Fluxes in the Western Arctic Ocean
4pm Low cost Diagnostics: Science Impacting Development
6pm Boston New Technology: November 2013 Product Showcase #BNT35
6pm Hope for a Livable Climate
6:30pm Designing For Resilient Cities
6:30pm MIT Joules (Women in Energy) - Discussion on Navigating Your Career in the Energy Field
7pm SITN Lecture - Extreme Weather and Climate Change
7pm "When to Blow the Whistle?"
7pm Small Risk, Catastrophic Consequence: The Challenge of Nuclear Terrorism
7:30pm Food Chain Restoration in the Face of Climate Change
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Thursday, November 21
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Architecture Boston
11am Space Packed Architecture
12pm FAS Green Program Brown Bag Lunch Screenings
12pm Managing Data Protection between the US and Europe: Balancing Freedom and Security
12:30pm First Generation Ethanol: Evolution, Potential and Constraints
1:30pm Research with MITx data
2pm Findings from the Kilowatt Crackdown, a Commercial Office Building Competition in Energy Efficient Operation
4pm Developing Safe Designs for an Uncertain Future
4pm Food Hubs: Local Food 2.0
4pm Perspectives on Indoor Air Quality: Indoor Chemical Exposures and the Impact of the Human Body on These Exposures
4:15pm The Brand IDEA: Managing Nonprofit Brands with Integrity, Democracy and Affinity
4:15pm Reverse Engineering Chinese Censorship
4:15pm "Adventures in Policy Modeling."
5pm Smart Suits to Enable Astronaut Exploration of Mars
5pm City Of Cambridge Resource Table
5:30pm Legatum Lecture: Obstacles and Opportunities to Delivering Financial Inclusion
6pm Seeing Earthquakes Before They Happen
6pm Eat Red Meat, Save the Planet - featuring Allan Savory and Mathieu Lalonde, Ph.D.
6pm LocalFoodBiz Culinary Entrepreneur Connection: Media
6:30pm ETH Zürich Alumni and Swissnex Boston Lecture
6:40pm Dirty Energy
7pm Urban Films: King Corn (2007)
7pm Notes from Underwater: A Life Growing Delectable Bivalves and How Shellfish Aquaculture Can Change the World
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Friday, November 22
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8am Energy Innovation and Israel: Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP)
9am Managing Holistically: Policies and Actions to Restore and Sustain Ecosystem Services
11am Towards Usable Robots for All
11:45am "The Information Revolution and the Future of Transportation."
12pm Easan Drury, NREL
1:30pm Sea Level Rise on Coastal Urban Design
4pm Chasing Ice: Free Film Screening + Ice Cream (Fossil Free MIT)
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Sunday, November 24
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1pm Autumn Convergence for a New National Agenda
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Monday, November 25
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11:45am MIT Humanitarian Speaker Series: Rich Serino, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
12pm Refining the climate role of tropical cyclones: Key constituents of the summer Hadley cell?
12pm Logistics and Innovation at FEMA: Lessons from the Past and a Direction for the Future
12pm ETIP: Rawi Abdelal, Herbert F. Johnson Professor of International Management, Harvard Business School
12:15pm Interrogating the Anthropocene
2:30pm Welfare Effects of Lengthened Copyright Protection
4pm State Capacity and Economic Development: A Network Approach
5:15pm "India’s Energy Scenario: View from the States"
5:30pm Firm Performance and Wages: Evidence from Across the Corporate Hierarchy
7pm Modernist Cuisine
7pm ACT Lecture | Tarek Elhaik: The Incurable-Image
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Tuesday, November 26
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4pm "An Open Conversation about Internet Communications Privacy"
7pm Green tech Entrepreneur Forum & Brainstorming
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to are at:
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com
The latest is
Net Zero and Beyond
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2013/11/net-zero-and-beyond.html
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Event Details
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Monday, November 18
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Transportation System Resilience, Extreme Weather, and Climate Change
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
12:00 - 12:45 p.m.
55 Broadway, Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Dr. Klaus H. Jacob, Special Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Adjunct Professor, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
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"What We Don't Know About Snow: Overview of the NASA Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) Cold season Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx)"
Monday, November 18,2013
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 54-915 (the tallest building on campus)
Speaker: Steve Nesbitt (Illinois)
NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, which will launch in early 2014, is tasked to detect and measure precipitation to 70 degrees latitude, where satellite precipitation estimates are highly uncertain. A major push of the GPM Ground Validation (GV) program is to validate spaceborne precipitation retrievals at mid- and high latitudes to constrain and improve satellite precipitation algorithms. Physically-based precipitation retrieval algorithms require knowledge of both the atmospheric and surface contributions to radiative transfer in the microwave. Focusing on the atmospheric portion of the problem, in order to constrain retrieval algorithms, we need to understand both the microphysical properties of precipitation as well as the scattering properties of the precipitation. At high latitudes, few reliable observations exist to routinely evaluate snowfall properties. Thus our ability to solve the “inverse problem” to retrieve snowfall properties such as mass, habit, and precipitation rate remain poorly constrained.
In January and February 2012, the GPM Cold Season Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx) was conducted near Barrie, Ontario, Canada to constrain mid-latitude winter precipitation scattering and microphysical properties. Radar observations at C, X, Ku, Ka, and W band from ground based scanning and profiling radars, VHF profiling radars and multi-frequency down and uplooking radiometers, and aircraft from GCPEx, can be used to not only constrain observed reflectivites in snow as well as construct dual frequency ratios (DFRs) that can be put in context with other observed properties of snow. Data from aircraft and ground-based in-situ microphysical probes, such as 2-D and bulk aircraft probes and surface disdrometers, can be used to identify the microphysical and scattering properties of the snow throughout the column of hydrometeors.
In this presentation, microphysical property relationships and snow scattering regimes will be identified in GCPEx storm events in a multi-frequency DFR-near Rayleigh radar reflectivity phase space using matched ground-based and aircraft-based radar data. These data will be interpreted using matched in-situ disdrometer and aircraft probe microphysical data from aircraft spirals. This analysis is geared towards evaluating scattering simulations and the choice of integral particle size distributions for snow precipitation retrieval algorithms for ground and spaceborne radars at relevant wavelengths. A comparison of results for different cases with different synoptic forcing will be presented.
Speaker's website: http://www.atmos.illinois.edu/people/nesbitt.html
MIT Atmospheric Seminar Series (MASS)
The MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar (MASS) is a student-run weekly seminar series within PAOC. Seminar topics include all research concerning the atmosphere and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars usually take place on Monday from 12-1pm followed by a lunch with graduate students. Besides the seminar, individual meetings with professors, post-docs, and students are arranged. The seminar series is run by graduate students and is intended mainly for students to interact with individuals outside the department, but faculty and post docs certainly participate.
Web site: http://eaps-www.mit.edu/paoc/events/mass-seminar-steve-nesbitt-illinois
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate (PAOC), Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact:
mass at mit.edu
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Using System Dynamics to Support Startups, Stimulate the Economy, and Create More Jobs
Monday, November 18, 2013
12:00p–1:00p
Virtual at http://sdm.mit.edu/news/news_articles/webinar_111813/saad-webinar-epowerhouse.html
Speaker: Fady Saad, SDM '11, Cofounder and CEO, ePowerhouse
MIT System Design and Management Program Systems Thinking Webinar Series
This series features research conducted by SDM faculty, alumni, students, and industry partners. The series is designed to disseminate information on how to employ systems thinking to address engineering, management, and socio-political components of complex challenges.
About this webinar:
Startups have the potential to stimulate the economy and create employment opportunities, but their failure rate is high. How can we help them succeed?
In this webinar, Fady Saad, SDM '11, cofounder and CEO of ePowerhouse, will present a systems-based approach to cultivating the key activities necessary for sustained startup success:
growing financially;
continuously fulfilling stakeholder needs and aspirations; and
adapting to the specific conditions of the company's evolving ecosystem.
Using a system dynamics model he developed himself, Saad will then describe a holistic, system-driven conceptualization of a startup and its internal dynamics???including human resources, product development, customers, and finances???followed by a discussion of the high-leverage points in the ecosystem. A question-and-answer period will follow the main presentation.
We invite you to join us!
Web site: http://sdm.mit.edu/news/news_articles/webinar_111813/saad-webinar-epowerhouse.html
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free and open to all
Tickets: see url above.
Sponsor(s): Engineering Systems Division, MIT System Design and Management
For more information, contact:
Lois Slavin
617-253-0812
lslavin at mit.edu
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(Not) Getting from Us to We: Expertise as a roadblock to change in U.S. environmental organizations
Monday, November 18, 2013
12:15pm to 2:00pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin Room 119, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Nate Towery (MIT, STS)
The STS Circle at Harvard is a group of doctoral students and recent PhDs who are interested in creating a space for interdisciplinary conversations about contemporary issues in science and technology that are relevant to people in fields such as anthropology, history of science, sociology, STS, law, government, public policy, and the natural sciences. We want to engage not only those who are working on intersections of science, politics, and public policy, but also those in the natural sciences, engineering, and architecture who have serious interest in exploring these areas together with social scientists and humanists.
There has been growing interest among graduate students and postdocs at Harvard in more systematic discussions related to STS. More and more dissertation writers and recent graduates find themselves working on exciting topics that intersect with STS at the edges of their respective home disciplines, and they are asking questions that often require new analytic tools that the conventional disciplines don’t necessarily offer. They would also like wider exposure to emerging STS scholarship that is not well-represented or organized at most universities, including Harvard. Our aim is to try to serve those interests through a series of activities throughout the academic year.
Science, Technology and Society seminars
All meetings will take place on Mondays, from 12:15–2 pm, in Maxwell Dworkin, Room 119, unless otherwise noted. Sandwich lunches are provided. Please RSVP tosts at hks.harvard.eduby Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
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Checking Under the Hood: Defining the Legacy of Trayvon Martin, from Conversation to Legislation
Monday, November 18th, 2013
1:30 - 3:00 pm
Austin Hall, Ames Courtroom, Harvard Law School, 1515 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.charleshamiltonhouston.org/2013/11/trayvonmartinsymposium/
Seating is first come, first served. Doors open at 1:15
Confirmed speakers:
Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin's mother
Darryl Parks and Benjamin Crump, attorneys for the Martin family
Hosted by Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.
Free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided.
Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice| 125 Mt Auburn Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge
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A New Industrial Policy in France: Talk with Arnaud Montebourg, French Minister for Economic Regeneration
Monday, November 18, 2013
3:30p–4:45p
MIT, Building E14-633, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Arnaud Montebourg - French Minister for Economic Regeneration
Together with the Consulate General of France in Boston, the MIT France Program is proud to welcome Arnaud Montebourg, French Minister for Economic Regeneration to campus next week. The Minister will deliver a talk entitled: A New Industrial Policy in France. The talk is free and open to the public, and will take place at 3:30PM on Monday, November 18th on the 6th floor of building E-14 at 75 Amherst street on MIT campus.
This talk will be delivered in English.
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies, MISTI, MIT-France Program, French Consulate General in Boston
For more information, contact: Erin Baumgartner
3-8813
embaum at mit.edu
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Modeling Human Communication Dynamics
Monday, November 18, 2013
4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Refreshments: 3:45 PM
MIT, Building 32-D463, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Louis-Philippe Morency
Abstract: Human face-to-face communication is a little like a dance, in that participants continuously adjust their behaviors based on verbal and nonverbal cues from the social context. Today's computers and interactive devices are still lacking many of these human-like abilities to hold fluid and natural interactions. Leveraging recent advances in machine learning, audio-visual signal processing and computational linguistics, my research focuses on creating human-computer interaction (HCI) technologies able to analyze, recognize and predict human subtle communicative behaviors in a social context. I formalize this new research endeavor with a Human Communication Dynamics framework, addressing four key computational challenges: behavioral dynamic, multimodal dynamic, interpersonal dynamic and societal dynamic. Central to this research effort is the introduction of new probabilistic models able to learn the temporal and fine-grained latent dependencies across behaviors, modalities and interlocutors. In this talk, I will present some of our recent achievements modeling multiple aspects of human communication dynamics, motivated by applications in healthcare (depression, PTSD, suicide, autism), education (learning analytics), business (negotiation, interpersonal skills) and social multimedia (opinion mining, social influence).
Bio: Louis-Philippe Morency is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California (USC) and leads the Multimodal Communication and Machine Learning Laboratory (MultiComp Lab) at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. He received his Ph.D. and Master degrees from MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In 2008, Dr. Morency was selected as one of "AI's 10 to Watch" by IEEE Intelligent Systems. He has received 7 best paper awards in multiple ACM- and IEEE-sponsored conferences for his work on context-based gesture recognition, multimodal probabilistic fusion and computational models of human communication dynamics. For the past two years, Dr. Morency has been leading a DARPA-funded multi-institution effort which created SimSensei, an interactive virtual human platform for healthcare decision support, and ltiSense, a multimodal perception library designed to objectively quantify behavioral indicators of psychological distress.
Contact: Nira Manokharan, 617-253-5977, nira at csail.mit.edu
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Wearable Robots: A Grand Challenge in Robotics
Monday, November 18, 2013
4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
MIT, Building 3-270, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Harry Asada , MIT MechE
Imagine that one day, you have a third arm and a third leg attached to your body. The extra limbs will help you hold objects, support your body, share a workload, and streamline the execution of a task. If the movements of such Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SRL) are tightly coordinated with your own arms, you may come to perceive the extra limbs as an extension of your body, incorporated into your body image. The objective of this work is to develop key enabling technologies for
transforming robots to act as parts of a human body. Wearable SRLs are opening up new horizons of robotics, posing diverse research issues and challenges ranging from machine design and human-robot coordination, to biomechanics, motor control, and machine learning and perception.
Three types of Supernumerary Robotic Limbs being built at the d'Arbeloff Lab will be presented: 1) a lightweight robot sitting on the shoulder of a human for lifting and supporting objects in the overhead area, 2) a seven-fingered hand (5 fingers + 2 robotic fingers) for grasping and manipulating large/odd-shaped objects, and 3) a pair of wearable canes attached around the waist for supporting and bracing the human body. For these wearable robots, communication and coordination with the human is the key challenge. Three aspects of coordination control will be presented. First, the concept of biological synergies is applied to the seven-fingered hand in order to control the two robotic fingers in concert with the five human fingers. Through grasp experiments and data analysis using Principal Component Analysis it will be shown that synergies exist for seven-fingered hands as well as for five-fingered hands. For real-time control, Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression is used for extracting
control laws from the data that can best correlate the posture of the two robotic fingers to that of the five human fingers. Second, interactive human-robot-task processes are modeled as a concurrent, distributed event system based on Coloured Petri Net (CPN). A type of hybrid control system is constructed by replacing CPN's static state transitions with dynamic, proactive transition laws learned from human demonstration data. Finally, a learning algorithm inspired by biological muscle training is applied to the wearable canes. Untrained robotic actuators are treated as un-innervated muscles. Repeated exposures to simultaneous physical and informational stimulations lead to formation of artificial neuromuscular junctions that control the wearable robots. The seminar will be concluded with potentials of wearable SRLs and their social and economic impacts, ranging from increasing productivity and safety for factory, construction, and field workers to improved quality of life for elderly people and the handicapped as well as reduced workload for caregivers and clinicians.
Contact: John J. Leonard, jleonard at csail.mit.edu
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"Emerging Modes of Knowledge Expression: humanities, the sciences and the re-enlightenment project"
Monday, November 18, 2013
4:00p–5:30p
MIT, Building E51-095, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Geoffrey Bowker, University of California, Irvine
Discussant: Daniel Rosenberg, University of Oregon
STS Colloquium
Web site: web.mit.edu/sts
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): SHASS Dean's Office, HASTS
For more information, contact: Randyn Miller
617-253-3452
randyn at mit.edu
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Noam Chomsky: What is Anarchism?
Monday, November 18, 2013
5:30p–7:00p
MIT, Building E51-115, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky, world-renowned public intellectual and MIT Professor emeritus, will discuss the reasoning behind his fearless lifelong questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. Chomsky's anarchism is distinctly optimistic and egalitarian. It is a living, evolving tradition, situated in a historical lineage, which emphasizes the power of collective, rather than individualist, action.
Nathan Schneider, author of Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse, will offer a brief introduction and moderate the Q&A session with the audience.
This event is based on the topic of Professor Chomsky's new volume, On Anarchism, available from New Press.
Web site: http://bostonreview.net/events#chomsky
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Political Science, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Boston Review
For more information, contact:
Daniel Pritchard
617-324-1360
daniel at bostonreview.net
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Models of Organizing in the Arts Ecosystem
Monday, November 18, 2013
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EST)
Harvard Innovation Lab, 125 Western Avenue, Boston
RSVP at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/9090244165
Models of Organizing in the Arts Ecosystem
In order for cultural enterprises to succeed, entrepreneurs must understand the cultural landscape as well as how startups can interface with the arts and culture environment. Join us for a workshop discussing how to navigate the arts, culture, and startup ecosystems in order to create a sustainable enterprise. This workshop is part of the Deans' Challenge for Cultural Entrepreneurship. Attendees will have the opportunity to mingle and form teams based on common interests after the workshop.
We check all attendee registrations at the door. Please bring a printed or smartphone copy of your EventBrite registration and Harvard student ID if you have registered as a Harvard Student. Attendance will be limited to registered guests and tickets will not be available at the door.
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The App Generation
WHEN Mon., Nov. 18, 2013, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE First Parish in Cambridge, 3 Church Street, Harvard Square
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Information Technology, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Cambridge Forum
SPEAKER(S) Howard Gardner and Katie Davis
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO 617.495.2727, director at cambridgeforum.org
NOTE Famed Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner and Katie Davis of the University of Washington’s Information School discuss the ways in which digital media are changing the way young people learn and relate to the world. Focusing on adolescents, they explore what it means to be “app-dependent” versus “app-enabled.” How does life for this generation differ from life before the digital age? What downsides do they see to young people’s deep involvement with apps? What benefits?
LINK www.cambridgeforum.org
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Science & Cooking: Fermentation — When Rotten Goes Right
WHEN Mon., Nov. 18, 2013, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Science Center Hall C, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
SPEAKER(S) David Chang, momofuku
COST Free and open to the public
NOTE The Science & Cooking lecture series runs weekly through the end of the fall semester. A full schedule, including the lecture topics, is available at seas.harvard.edu….
Each talk will begin with a 15-minute lecture by a Faculty member of the course, which will discuss one of the scientific topics from that week's class.
For a sample of what is to come, an archive of past talks (from 2010, 2011, and 2012) can be viewed at YouTube.com/Harvard
The popular public lecture series grew out of a collaboration between the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Alícia Foundation in Spain. A related Harvard College course, “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter," which will be offered to undergraduates for the fourth time in the fall of 2013, uses food and cooking to explicate fundamental principles in applied physics and engineering. Blending haute cuisine with laboratory research, the chefs and food experts teach alongside Harvard faculty members. In addition to lectures and readings, lab work is an integral part of the course, and students perform experiments on topics including heat transfer, viscosity and elasticity, and crystallization and entropy.
This year, for the first time, a version of the Science & Cooking course will also be offered through HarvardX, Harvard University's newest online learning initiative. Registration for SPU27x, the massively open online course (MOOC), is open now at harvardx.harvard.edu.
The Science & Cooking Lecture Series does not replicate the content of either the Harvard College course or the HarvardX online course; rather, these public events are simply meant to inform and inspire with a fresh perspective on culinary science. For more information, visit http://www.seas.harvard.edu/cooking
LINK http://www.seas.harvard.edu/cooking
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Tuesday, November 19
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Architecture Boston
November 19-21
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Hall C
Register for Exhibit Hall free until October 31 at http://abexpo.com/register/
$15 after October 31
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Science fiction or reality? A discussion of near-term ethical, legal, and societal issues in robotics
November 19, 2013
12:30pm ET
Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein West A, Room 2019, second floor, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP required for those attending in person at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2013/11/darling#RSVP
This event will be webcast live at 12:30pm ET.
Kate Darling, Berkman Center Fellow
Prominent robot ethics questions focus on liability and privacy concerns in the face of increasingly autonomous technology. A lesser-discussed issue is the emergence and effect of robots that are designed to interact with humans on a social level. Studies have begun to establish a tendency to perceive social robots differently than we do other objects. As more and more robotic companions enter into our lives and homes, our inclination to project life-like qualities onto robots could have some societal implications.
About Kate
Kate Darling is an IP Research Specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and a Ph.D. candidate in Intellectual Property and Law & Economics at the ETH Zurich. After surviving law school, she went on to pursue her passion for innovation policy at the intersection of law and technology. Her work has covered economic issues in copyright and patent systems, and she now also increasingly writes and lectures about robotics and law, with a particular interest in social and ethical issues.
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Systems Based on Large-area Electronics: Bringing Electronics to Life through Extensive Interfacing with the Physical World
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
4:15p–5:15p
Refreshments at 4:00 p.m.
MIT, Building 34-101, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Naveen Verma, Princeton University
As electronics moves into the ambient domain, an important possibility emerges: it can now access a large number of signals that may be of high importance to us. The question is whether current technologies can acquire signals on such a scale. Large-area electronics enables unprecedented physical interfacing; but, to exploit this within systems, architectures are needed that synergistically leverage the efficient functionality provided by CMOS. Prof. Verma will explore directions for such architectures.
MTL Seminar Series
Web site: http://www-mtl.mit.edu/seminars/fall2013.html
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Microsystems Technology Laboratories
For more information, contact: Debroah Hodges-Pabon
253-5264
debb at mtl.mit.edu
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Fifty Years after The Feminine Mystique: What’s Changed at Home and at Work?
WHEN Tue., Nov. 19, 2013, 4:15 p.m.
WHERE Knafel Center (formerly Radcliffe Gymnasium), 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Ethics, Exhibitions, Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Stephanie Coontz, Evergreen State College and Council on Contemporary Families; Ariela Dubler, Columbia Law School; and Nancy F. Cott, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
COST Free and open to the public
NOTE Two notable scholars will look back at Betty Friedan’s "The Feminine Mystique" and consider whether movement toward equality has persisted or stalled since the book was published in 1963. What has changed in roles at home and at work? How has law figured in the balance? Do we have new mystiques today?
LINK http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2013-fifty-years-after-feminine-mystique
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The MIT Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar: Was the Arab Spring Just a Moment?
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
4:30p–6:30p
MIT, Building E51-376, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Professor Tarek Masoud, Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government
Almost three years after the onset of the so-called Arab Spring, that season of hope and upheaval has yielded a depressingly modest harvest. Of the 22 countries of the Arab League, only four (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen) managed to bring down their autocrats. And in none of these do we yet see the democracy that protesters had clamored for.
Nowhere is the story more mournful than in Egypt. Today, as a resurgent security apparatus mounts a purge against the Brotherhood, and supporters of the president carry out a campaign of increasingly uncivil resistance, democracy in Egypt seems farther away than ever. Is Egypt's democratic experiment over? Was the vaunted Arab Spring a mere moment of enthusiasm, quickly snuffed out by deep social and political forces that had long kept the region mired in authoritarianism? What hope is there yet for genuinely responsive, accountable government in the Arab world's most populous country?
The Bustani Middle East Seminar is organized under the auspices of the MIT Center for International Studies, which conducts research on contemporary international issues and provides and opportunity for faculty and students to share perspectives and exchange views. Each year the Bustani Seminar invites scholars, journalists, consultants, and other experts from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States to MIT to present recent research findings on contemporary politics, society and culture, and economic and technological development in the Middle East.
Web site: http://web.mit.edu/cis/bustani/bustani2013fall.htm
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies, Technology and Culture Forum
For more information, contact:
Heidi Erickson
252-1888
hae at mit.edu
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Tapping Into the Wisdom of Traditional Farmers: Sustainably Growing Food in the Face of Climate Change and Water Scarcity
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
5:00pm
Tufts University, Biology Department, Barnum Hall Rm 008, 163 Packard Avenue, Medford
Reservations: garynabhantufts.eventbrite.com
Gary Nabhan
Over the next half century, climate change will dramatically affect which food crop varieties reach optimum quality innearly every foodscape in North America. Farmers' selection of crop varieties and how they grow them in each microclimate will be radically reworked by declining chill hours, extreme summer temperatures, the changed frequency of tropical storms, and extended droughts. Fresh water scarcity and increasing salinity will also rework what food plants can be grown in many localities as well, not just in already arid areas, but along all coasts. With 2300 counties declared drought disaster areas in the US within the last two years, it is time that horticulturists, gardeners, and farmers in every part of the country look more critically at the diversity of some heirloom vegetables, fruits and grains, a well as new farmer-selected varieties derived from participatory plant breeding in the U.S. By listening to traditional and innovative farmers on five continents and seeing how they are adapting their diversity of food crops to adaptations, Nabhan offers options to greater reliance on a few so-called climate ready GE crops, each of which costs to 5 million US dollars to develop, market and employ. The farm-based strategies for innovation developed through biomimicry, ecomimicry and etnomimicry will be highlighted.
Gary Paul Nabhan is the W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Arizona, as well as the permaculture designer and orchard-keeper of Almuniya de los Zopilotes Experimental Farm in Patagonia, Arizona. Widely acknowledged as a pioneer in the local-food movement and grassroots seed conservation, Nabhan was honored by Utne Reader in 2011 as one of twelve people making the world a better place to live. A recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award, his twenty-four books have been translated into six languages.
Sponsored by the Anthropology and Biology Departments, the Environmental Studies Program, the Agriculture Food and Environment Program at the Friedman School of Nutrition, and Tufts Institute of the Environment
617.627.3553
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Third Annual Transportation Networking Night
Tuesday, November 19, 5:30-8:00pm
The Lansdowne Pub, 9 Lansdowne Street, Boston
Tickets: $5.00 at https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07e8etfwxf31f014cd&oseq=&c=&ch=
Think that transportation has the power to make our city more connected and livable?Are you involved, or considering getting involved in Boston's urban planning, transportation or design world? Love thinking about how cities are shaped, or just wanting to expand your social and professional network?
Join us for this unique networking opportunity. Schmooze with people from many different organizations, firms, and government agencies while finding out what's happening in your backyard. Light appetizers will be provided.
10 in 1 StreetTalk on December 11. Want to present at the StreetTalk? Submit your proposal by November 24 to RFP at livablestreets.info
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Eat What You Want: The Intuitive Approach
WHEN Tue., Nov. 19, 2013, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Allston Education Portal, 175 North Harvard St., Allston, MA 02134
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Special Events, Wellness/Work Life
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Allston Education Portal and The Center for Wellness at the Harvard University Health Services
SPEAKER(S) Michelle Gallant
COST Free and open to the public; registration required
TICKET WEB LINK .eventbrite.com/event/8766425615
CONTACT INFO Phone: 617-496-5022; Email: allston_edportal at harvard.edu
NOTE These days, almost everyone is anxious and guilty about their eating. Is there a way out of the endless cycle of deprivation and overeating? The intuitive eating approach can help you find a balance between eating what you want and eating for health in a way that is sustainable and life affirming. Learn how giving yourself permission to eat actually allows you to gain control of your eating.
LINK http://edportal.harvard.edu/news
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Boston Gaming November Demo Night
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EST)
Microsoft, 1 Cambridge Center, Cambridge
RSVP at http://bosnovdemo-es2.eventbrite.com
This is the place to see the newest indepdendent games being built in Boston and network with the people who built them. Each month, we get together to watch seven demos, drink beer and eat pizza. We're doing it again this month at Microsoft. Join our community of game developers, designers, creatives, investors and more building across multiple platforms and genres.
Want to demo your game? Complete the form and we'll be in touch.
Please include your first and last name when you RSVP. Your name must be on the list to get past building security. Also, all guests must RSVP on their own.
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Sustainable Business Network Massachusetts B2B
Tuesday, November 19th
6-8:30 p.m.
Workbar, 45 Prospect Street, Central Square, Cambridge
Non-members cost: $10
RSVP taryn at sbnmass.org
After nine successful B2B Networking Group Meetings, we're celebrating a year of amazing and inspirational events by throwing the final business-to-business meeting of 2013! Please join us for a special Member Appreciation Night, where SBN Members and Local First Affiliates can attend for FREE!RSVP now to reserve your seat.
Non-Members- you benefit, too! Join us for only $10 this month. Whether this is your first time joining us, or you've been a loyal B2B Group Participant since the start, come experience what all the buzz is about!
The event will be sponsored by
New Leaf Legal, a flat fee firm that provides corporate and IP services to emerging and small businesses and artists located in the heart of Central Square.
We encourage everyone to come for a fun night of casual networking with like-minded business leaders.
Network, mingle, learn and connect- we appreciate everyone's support of SBN's newest segment in our Leadership Exchange Program, and hope to continue this success well into 2014!
Members: FREE! Please RSVP now to reserve your seat!
Non-Members: Reduced! $10 Non-Member Rate
Please e-mail taryn at sbnmass.org to secure your space!
Our Member Appreciation B2B will be generously hosted byWorkbar, a network of shared co-working office spaces made up of start-ups, creative entrepreneurs, independent professionals and enterprise teams.
Refreshments and event sponsored by New Leaf Legal, a flat fee firm that provides corporate and IP services to emerging and small businesses and artists located in the heart of Central Square.
Thank you to our generous sponsors!
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Majora Carter
WHEN Tue., Nov. 19, 2013, 6:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Graduate School of Design
SPEAKER(S) Majora Carter
COST Free and open to the public
NOTE Born in the Bronx, Majora Carter returned to revitalize her neighborhood through community development after attending college and earning an MFA as a filmmaker. She led a campaign to prevent construction of a waste facility near a residential area and went on to pursue other improvements with the nonprofit Sustainable South Bronx, creating a park from a disused concrete plant, planning for additional green space, establishing a community market, and raising public awareness about health and air quality. She was a 2005 MacArthur Foundation fellow. As founder of the Majora Carter Group, she now serves as a consultant to city governments and businesses seeking to hone their environmental strategies and effectively communicate with the public. Her community engagement has continued in various forms, including Startup Box: South Bronx, an initiative to create an incubator workspace for neighborhood-based technology innovation.
LINK www.gsd.harvard.edu/#/events/majora-carter.html
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Snarky Science @ CafeSci Boston
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Middlesex Lounge, 315 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge
Scott Asakawa with NOVA Education invites us to the next CafeSci Boston at the Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge. This month’s speaker is Brian J Abraham. Brian earned his PhD from Boston University in Bioinformatics before taking a position as a Postdoctoral Associate in the lab of Richard Young at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. By day, he’s a lab scientist researching stem cell gene expression. By night, he blogs as “The Snarky Scientist (Karaoke Competitor),” where he combines a great amount of insider knowledge about science with a healthy dose of humor and “snark.” You can find him dishing out pearls of wisdom and humor on twitter as @SnarkyScientist.
Join us at Middlesex where Brian will talk about his current research, and also give his take on the current states of science and science communication. As always, he’ll be happy to answer questions from the audience as well. It’s sure to be a fun night, so come out with your friends, grab a drink, and get ready for a good time.
Details:
CafeSci is a series of science cafes around the country produced by the folks at the PBS NOVA television series. They're bringing scientists and cutting edge technology entrepreneurs to present their work to the public in a fun and social format, over food and drinks.
Presentation starts at 7:00 - get there early tho to find seats and socialize with fellow nerds. Your organizers will be there around 6:30, and will be wearing Meetup pins so folks can find us.
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Greenport Forum: Hubway in Central Cambridgeport: Let’s Talk About It
November 19
7:00 pm
Cambridgeport Baptist Church, 459 Putnam Avenue, Cambridge
Join us for a dialogue with representatives from the Cambridge Community Development Department about putting a new Hubway bicycle share station near Dana Park. The Hubway system offers a convenient and affordable way to get around by bicycle, with over 120 stations in Cambridge, Boston, Brookline and Somerville and easy connections to the MBTA system. Having a station near Dana Park would increase access for neighborhood residents to Hubway and all of the destinations it serves that are beyond walking distance. At the same time, concerns have been raised about the possible loss of on-street parking spaces. Both on- and off-road options will be discussed.
This forum offers an opportunity for an open conversation about this issue. We would like everyone's voice to be heard. Our hope is to foster a win-win solution in which the placement of a new Hubway Station addresses neighbors' concerns and works for the entire neighborhood. Please come and participate in this important conversation.
GreenPort envisions and encourages a just and sustainable Cambridgeport neighborhood
For more information, contact Steve Wineman at steven.wineman at gmail.com
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Pricing Carbon: The Role of the Free Market in Solving the Climate Crisis
November 19, 2013
7:00-8:00PM
Babson's Sorenson Theatre, 231 Forest Street, Wellesley
Joseph Aldy, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
John M. Reilly, Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, MIT
Gary Rucinski, New England Coordinator, Citizens Climate Lobby; co-creater of a 2016 ballot initiative for a revenue-neutral carbon tax
Theda Skocpol, Professor of Government and Sociology, Harvard University
Fritz Fleischmann, William R. Dill Governance Chair, Babson College
hosted by NPR's Steve Curwood
Contact E-mail: lwvWellesley at gmail.com
Event URL: http://lwvma.org/
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Lone Survivor (FREE advance screening)
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
8:00p
MIT, Building 26-100, access via 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Lone Survivor, starring Mark Wahlberg, tells the story of four Navy SEALs on an ill-fated covert mission to neutralize a high-level Taliban operative who are ambushed by enemy forces in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan. Based on The New York Times bestseller, this story of heroism, courage and survival is directed by Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) and also stars Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster and Eric Bana.
Web site: http://lsc.mit.edu/
Open to: the general public
Cost: free
Sponsor(s): LSC
For more information, contact:
MIT Lecture Series Committee
617-253-3791
lsc at mit.edu
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Wednesday, November 20
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Architecture Boston
November 19-21
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Hall C
Register for Exhibit Hall free until October 31 at http://abexpo.com/register/
$15 after October 31
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Nuclear Proliferation, Preventive War, and a Leader's Decision to Intervene
WHEN Wed., Nov. 20, 2013, 10 – 11:30 a.m.
WHERE Harvard, Belfer Center Library, Littauer 369, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Science, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Project on Managing the Atom
SPEAKER(S) Rachel Whitlark, research fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom
CONTACT INFO atom at hks.harvard.edu
NOTE Under what conditions do states seriously consider and use preventive military force as a counter proliferation strategy against adversarial nuclear weapons programs? In this seminar, Rachel Whitlark, Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom, will utilize the comparative case study method and conducts archival research and process tracing into six cases of American and Israeli counter-proliferation decision-making. She will argue that it is the pre-presidential or pre-prime ministerial beliefs of executives, specifically their beliefs about the general consequences of nuclear proliferation and the ability to deter the particular proliferator in question, that determine a leader’s likely counter-proliferation behavior once in office.
To illustrate this argument, Ms. Whitlark will explore the case of U.S. decision-making vis-à-vis the Chinese nuclear program between 1961 and 1964 and will demonstrate that it is the divergent prior beliefs of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson on nuclear issues that explain why Kennedy seriously considered and planned for preventive military action prior to his untimely death, but Johnson gave no such consideration of military force in the immediate aftermath of the assassination and up through the Chinese nuclear test in October 1964.
Coffee and tea provided. Please join us - Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.
LINK http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/even
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High Speed Rail in the Private Sector – Some Lessons
Wednesday, November 20
12:00 to 1:00 pm. Lunch will be served at 11:45 am.
MIT, Building E51-335, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Nicola Shaw is CEO of High Speed 1. HS1 Ltd holds the concession to operate, manage and maintain the high-speed railway infrastructure and its stations between London St Pancras and the Channel Tunnel until December 2040. She was previously a Director of FirstGroup PLC and was also the Managing Director of the £1.3 billion revenue, 25,000 staff bus division in UK, Ireland and Germany. Her career has spanned both the public and private sectors in the UK and abroad. Before joining FirstGroup, Nicola had several regulatory, commercial and operational roles, including positions with the SRA and the ORR, as well as with Bechtel, Halcrow, the World Bank and London Transport. Nicola is a Non-Executive Director of the Aer Lingus Group plc and a member of the DfT Rail Franchising Panel. She is also a Trustee of Transaid, an international UK development charity. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Oxford University and a Master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Franco Chingcuanco (fchingcu at mit.edu), Simmy Willemann (simmyw at mit.edu) or Sarah Smith (sajsmith at mit.edu)
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What if the Greensboro Four Had Twitter? Social Justice in the Age of Social Media and Hip-Hop
WHEN Wed., Nov. 20, 2013, 12 p.m.
WHERE Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Music, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Hutchins Center for African & African American Research
SPEAKER(S) Mark Anthony Neal, professor of African & African American studies.Duke University
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO hutchevents at fas.harvard.edu, 617.495.3611
NOTE A Q+A will follow the lecture. Feel free to bring your lunch.
LINK hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu
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Human Rights, Democracy and Support for the Use of Force: An Experimental Approach
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
12:00p–1:30p
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Jessica Weeks, Cornell University
SSP Wednesday Seminar Program
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Security Studies Program
For more information, contact:
617-253-7529
valeriet at mit.edu
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Your Brain on Food: The Neurocognitive Basis of Eating Behavior (Wednesday Seminar Series)
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
12:15pm - 1:15pm
Tufts, Jaharis Building, Behrakis Auditorium, 150 Harrison Avenue, Boston
Miguel Alonso-Alonso, MD, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Dr. Alonso-Alonso studies the neurocognitive basis of eating behavior, using new methods that integrate cognitive neuroscience with previous work in psychology and nutrition. This seminar will provide an overview of recent findings involving innovative techniques such as eye-tracking technology, brain stimulation and neuroimaging to uncover the mechanisms of executive function and control over food choices
Contact Name: Charlene Stevens
Contact Email: charlene.stevens at tufts.edu
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Media Lab Conversations Series: Khalida Brohi
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
3:00p–4:30p
MIT, Building E14, 3rd floor atrium, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Khalida Brohi
Khalida Brohi is a social entrepreneur from Pakistan. She received her BA in international relations, sociology, and economics from the University of Karachi in Pakistan. Currently, Khalida is the program manager of Sughar Women, a program of the Participatory Development Initiatives (PDI) that works to engage customs to end customary violence against women in tribal areas of Pakistan by providing socio-economic empowerment to women, and education to tribal leaders and men about the status of women. She is a speaker for Girls Fight Back!, an organization that helps women and girls to lead safe and peaceful lives. She also serves as a presenter for the Climate Reality Project, a non-profit organization of more than 3,000 volunteers personally trained by former US Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore to raise awareness about climate change.
Web site: http://www.media.mit.edu/events/2013/11/20/khalida-brohi-conversation-joi-ito
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Media Lab
For more information, contact: Jess Sousa
events-admin at media.mit.edu
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Gas Hydrates, Climate Change, and Ocean-Atmospheric Methane Fluxes in the Western Arctic Ocean
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
3:45p–5:00p
Refreshments, 3:45 pm, Ida Green Lounge
MIT, Building 54-915 (the tallest building on campus)
Speaker: Carolyn Ruppel, US Geological Survey & MIT Visiting Scientist
Arctic Ocean and continental margins contain large amounts of methane sequestered in gas hydrates. Well-documented high-latitude warming, coupled with extraordinarily high ocean-atmospheric methane fluxes published for the East Siberian Shelf, has led some to postulate an imminent, "Arctic methane catastrophe." In theory, this catastrophe would be characterized by runaway gas hydrate dissociation, widespread methane expulsion, ocean acidification, and exacerbated greenhouse warming. To determine whether the East Siberian Shelf observations applied to other parts of the circum-Arctic Ocean, we first mapped the contemporary distribution of methane gas, gas hydrates, and relict subsea permafrost in Western Arctic Ocean sediments. Using cavity ring-down spectroscopy, we acquired ~5000 km of underway shipboard data to constrain ocean-atmospheric methane fluxes and atmospheric marine boundary layer CO2 and methane gradients from the Bering Strait to Amundsen Gulf, crossing areas with and without climate-sensitive gas hydrates. We also determined the strength of the Western Arctic Ocean water column methane sink. The oxidative sink has sufficient vigor to consume the methane released annually during upper slope gas hydrate dissociation driven by short-term ocean temperature fluctuations. Together, these observations imply the Western Arctic Ocean is not experiencing a methane catastrophe, and extrapolations based on the East Siberian Shelf results should be re-examined.
EAPS Department Lecture Series
Weekly talks given by leading thinkers in the areas of geology, geophysics, geobiology, geochemistry, meteorology, oceanography, climatology, and planetary science.
Web site: http://eapsweb.mit.edu/events/2013/fall_DLS_Ruppel
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact: Jen DiNisco
617-253-2127
jdinisco at mit.edu
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Low cost Diagnostics: Science Impacting Development
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
4:00p–5:30p
MIT, Building E51-115, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Prof. George Whitesides, Harvard University
Prof. Whitesides is pioneering patterned paper technology diagnostics for a wide range of diseases common in developing regions.
MIT Tata Center - Fall 2013 Speaker Series
Web site: tatacenter.mit.edu
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Tata Center for Technology and Design
For more information, contact: Patricia Reilly
reilly at mit.edu
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Boston New Technology: November 2013 Product Showcase #BNT35
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
hack / reduce, 275 3rd Street, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.meetup.com/Boston_New_Technology/events/148994162/
Free event! Come learn about 6 innovative and exciting technology products and network with the Boston/Cambridge startup community! Each presenter gets 5 minutes for product demonstration and 5 minutes for Q&A. Please follow @BostonNewTech and use the #BNT34 hashtag in social media posts: details here.
Sponsors:
FWD.us is an organization started by key leaders in the tech community to promote policies to keep the United States and its citizens competitive in a global economy—including comprehensive immigration reform and education reform. Co-founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, FWD.us is organizing a hackathon aimed at combating problems within the United States immigration system. The hackathon kicks off near San Francisco on November 20th. JOIN THE MOVEMENT FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM! Add your name atFWD.us.
hack/reduce: Our mission is to help Boston create the talent and the technologies that will shape our future in a big data-driven economy. At hack/reduce you’ll get access to our large-scale compute cluster, hands-on workshops, and a physical space in the heart of Kendall Square. hack/reduce is a non-profit established in partnership with the State of Massachusetts, a number of local and global firms committed to innovation, and in collaboration with MIT, Harvard and other local universities. Working closely with our partners and the community, we’ll bring developers, data scientists and domain experts across disciplines together to create the next generation of Big Data technologies and applications.
Agenda:
Join us at hack/reduce Cambridge:
6:00 - 6:30 - Networking & Pizza Dinner
6:30 to 7:30 - Special Simulcast with tech leaders - details coming!
7:30 to 7:40 - Announcements
7:40 to 8:40 - Presentations, Q&A
8:40 to 9:00 - More Networking
9:00 - hack/reduce closes
Products and Presenters:
1.Ari Weil / Yottaa
2. Stefan Reishamer / Filosync
3. Jamie Manning / Snagastool
4. Scott Barnett / Careernumbers
5. Robin Johnson / Skit App
6. Greg McHale / good2gether
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Hope for a Livable Climate
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Potluck 6:00 - 7:00 PM, Panel Discussion 7:00 - 9:00PM
University Lutheran Church, 66 Winthrop Street, Cambridge (Harvard Square, next to Pinocchio's Pizza)
RSVP at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5069519068
The Promise of Restorative Grazing & Other Ecological Innovations to Regenerate Soil, Secure Food & Water, Revive Rural Economies and Reverse Global Warming
Moderated by Prof. William Moomaw, Tufts University
Professor Moomaw will speak briefly on the need to “mobilize the biosphere.”
Featured Speakers
Precious Phiri - Senior Facilitator, Africa Center for Holistic Management (ACHM) in Zimbabwe. Precious directs training for villages in the Hwange Communal Lands region that are implementing restorative grazing programs using Holistic Land and Livestock Management. This helps rural communities in Africa to reduce poverty, rebuild soils, and restore food and water security. This nature-based solution has been successfully used on different landscapes in Africa and the Americas. Precious was born and raised in one of the participating communities.
Judith D. Schwartz - Environmental Journalist and author of Cows Save the Planet And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth(Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013). New Yorker writer and author of Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change, Elizabeth Kolbert writes:“Judith Schwartz takes a fascinating look at the world right beneath our feet. Cows Save the Planet is a surprising, informative, and ultimately hopeful book.” Judith will discuss innovative approaches to land restoration and climate mitigation as covered in her book.
Seth Itzkan - President, Planet-TECH Associates; Advisory Board Member, Biodiversity for a Livable Planet. Seth, a consultant on innovations for a regenerative future, has spent ten weeks at the Africa Center for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe. He has given a TEDx presentation, been interviewed by Worldwatch, and written and lectured extensively on the promise of restorative grazing to reverse desertification and capture atmospheric carbon through rapid soil formation. Seth will address the climate mitigation potential of this innovation.
This event is part of an evolving series of Creating the Future We Want programs focused on the role of biology in cooling the planet. Sponsored by Biodiversity for a Livable Climate (BLC) (bio4climate.org) and Planet-TECH Associates (planet-tech.com), with support from Somerville Climate Action (somervilleclimateaction.org).
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Designing For Resilient Cities
November 20
6:30 pm
Fletcher School/Tufts University, Cabot 206, 170 Packard Avenue, Medford
Lecture by Steve Heikin, Principal, ICON Architecture
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MIT Joules (Women in Energy) - Discussion on Navigating Your Career in the Energy Field
November 20, 2013
6:30p–8:30p
MIT, Building E62-262, 100 Main Street, Cambridge
Navigating a career path in the fast-paced dynamic field of energy can be challenging. Come hear a panel of three successful, mid-career women share their experiences. Topics will cover the decisions they have made, opportunities they have seized and recommendations to anyone interested in starting or accelerating their careers. The event will begin with an introduction from each panelist followed by a question and answer session. Stick around after the presentation for a chance to network with these amazing women!
Please RSVP at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ceJGbS9jA-gDycQMcbDp6cgSXFncPLQ642kK2-gd71c/viewform
Sponsored by: MIT Energy Club
Admission: Open to the public
For more information: Contact MIT Energy Club
bessma at mit.edu
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SITN Lecture - Extreme Weather and Climate Change
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
7pm
Harvard Medical School, Armenise Amphitheater, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston
Join us for the next lecture in Harvard University's Science in the News Fall Lecture Series, Extreme Weather and Climate Change
For those of you not familiar with SITN's lecture format, lectures are free, accessible, and open to the public. All lectures are given entirely by graduate students at Harvard and focus on hot topics in science research and news.
A team of three graduate students each present a 30-40 minute segment, with breaks for questions and refreshments. The lectures last for about two hours, and are often followed by lab tours.
They will have light refreshments before the lecture (coffee, tea, cookies, etc.)
Editorial Comment: The lecture series is available as a livestream and previous lectures are archived at http://www.youtube.com/user/SITNBoston/
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"When to Blow the Whistle?" A discussion on the role of whistleblowers in society
Wednesday, Nov. 20
7:00 p.m.
Ed Portal, 175 North Harvard Street, Allston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/event/9053791133
The Ed Portal and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society will host an evening of small-group discussions led by Professor Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, founder and director of the Berkman Center.
With a focus on building community and thoughtful discussion, we will explore the unfolding debate around transparency, secrecy, leaks, and morality.
Come to the event to engage in small-group discussions about the pertinent questions raised by the disclosures of Edward Snowden.
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Small Risk, Catastrophic Consequence: The Challenge of Nuclear Terrorism
Wednesday, November 20
7-9pm
MIT, Building 6-120, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
James Walsh, MIT Security Studies Program
Sponsored by Technology and Culture Forum at MIT and Global Zero at MIT
http://web.mit/edu/tac or http://web.mit.edu/mitglobalzero
Sponsored by Technology and Culture Forum at MIT and Global Zero at MIT
web.mit.edu/tac ~ web.mit.edu/mitglobalzero
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Food Chain Restoration in the Face of Climate Change
Wednesday, November 20
7:30-8:30pm
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, Jamaica Plain
Fee $10 member, $15 nonmember, Free students (students must call 617.384.5277 to register for free)
RSVP at https://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/SelectDate.aspx
Gary Paul Nabhan, W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems, University of Arizona
Recent years have brought spikes in the frequency of strange weather patterns and severe storms, with many blaming the increase on human-caused climate change. If this new normal, as it’s being called, is here to stay, it will have profound implications on food production. To address these challenges, food and farming activist Gary Paul Nabhan proposes that we look to the past for solutions—at crops and techniques used in regions that have historically endured this kind of weather. Hear his thoughts about the need for increased biodiversity on farmlands and how strategies, such as growing hedgerows, composting, and planting multiple-strata orchard-gardens, can play a role in relinking the broken food chain and adapting to accelerating climate change. Nabhan was chosen as an Utne Reader visionary in 2011.
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Thursday, November 21
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Architecture Boston
November 19-21
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Hall C
Register for Exhibit Hall free until October 31 at http://abexpo.com/register/
$15 after October 31
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Space Packed Architecture
Thursday, November 21, 2013
11 am
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Rafi Segal PhD
The talk will present the extraordinary work of Alfred Neumann (1900-1968) undertaken in Israel during the 1960s. Neumann's approach to architecture reflected a paradigm shift from the notion of "building as object" to "building as pattern" while serving as a critique of the broad spread 1950s International Style. His work explored the used of non-orthogonal polyhedral geometries in the creation of new architectural forms and expressions while retaining humanist principles as part of the concept he coined "The Humanization of Space." Exploring and discussing Neumann's work in relation to parallel themes and directions in post-World War II architecture expands our understanding of the alternatives to main stream Modernism and furthermore advances a theoretical framework for contemporary interests in pattern making as a design strategy.
Architecture / CAU + HTC Brown Bag Lunch Talk
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Architecture, History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art
For more information, contact: Arindam Dutta
adutta at mit.edu
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FAS Green Program Brown Bag Lunch Screenings
Thursday, November 21, 2013
12-1PM
Harvard, Mallinckrodt 102, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Snacks are provided.
Join the FAS Green Program as we screen environmentally themed TED Talks. Each month we pick a theme, and bring you different variants on that theme. This month is "Coexistence". Please join us!
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Managing Data Protection between the US and Europe: Balancing Freedom and Security
WHEN Thu., Nov. 21, 2013, 12 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Lower Level Conference Room, Busch Hall, Center for European Studies, 27 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program on Transatlantic Relations of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Seminar
SPEAKER(S) Georg Macolo, Former Editor in Chief, Der Spiegel; Visiting Scholar, Program on Transatlantic Relations
COST free
CONTACT INFO Ann Townes, atownes at wcfia.harvard.edu
NOTE A light lunch will be available in the dining room adjacent to the Guido Goldman Room as of 11:45
LINK ces.fas.harvard.edu/#/events/1860
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First Generation Ethanol: Evolution, Potential and Constraints
Thursday, November 21, 2013
12:30-1:45 PM
(a light lunch will be served – no RSVP, first-come first-served)
Murrow Room, The Fletcher School, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
with José Roberto Moreira, Professor of Energy, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Open to the public. Convened by the Sustainable Development Diplomacy and Governance Program of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Fletcher.
Dr. Moreira will present an update on ethanol and bioelectricity co-production in Brazil, followed by a discussion about its near-term potential to further mitigate climate change in the transportation sector through the synergistic use of ethanol and electricity in hybrid cars. Finally, he will show how ethanol derived efficiently from sugar fermentation can be used as a negative GHG emission fuel and as the starting point to promote Biomass Energy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) technologies. He has played a major role in the development of Brazil’s extensive biofuels program.
José Roberto Moreira is professor of Energy at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He began his career as professor of Physics at the University of Sao Paulo in 1971. He was an energy expert at Princeton University from 1979-1980, and in 1987, he moved to the Institute of Energy and Environment at the University of Sao Paulo, where he launched a graduate program in Energy/Environment. Dr. Moreira joined the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1994 to 2011 and was one of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize laureates. He has also worked for several other United Nations Programs and is author of more than 200 books and papers on Nuclear Physics, Atomic Physics, Energy Conservation, Energy Planning and Environment. Outside of the University he was director of Companhia Energetica de São Paulo from 1983 - 1987, Secretary of Energy at the Ministry of Mines and Energy from 1985 - 1986, executive director of the Biomass Users Network from 1992 - 1997, and is presently director of NEGAWATT, a private engineering company.
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Research with MITx data
Thursday, November 21, 2013
1:30p–3:00p
MIT, Building 66-154, 25 Ames Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Ike Chuang and Daniel Seaton
The MITx program has generated a tremendous amount of data, both on edX and residentially at MIT. From the 14 MITx on edX courses, there are over 500 million records of events coming from over 600 thousand students; from the 23 residential MITx courses, we have records from over 2,700 student interactions. This data is a tremendous resource for understanding learning and improving courses. We describe what data is available, how to obtain access, within bounds set by FERPA, and illustrate some of the richness and potential of the data.
xTalks: Digital Discourses
This series provides a forum to facilitate awareness, deep understanding and transference of educational innovations at MIT and elsewhere. We hope to foster a community of educators, researchers, and technologists engaged in developing and supporting effective learning experiences through online learning environments and other digital technologies.
Web site: http://odl.mit.edu/event/ike-chuang-dan-seaton-data-analytics-from-moocs/
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): OEIT- Office of Educational Innovation and Technology
For more information, contact:
Mary Curtin
617-252-1981
oeit-all at mit.edu
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Findings from the Kilowatt Crackdown, a Commercial Office Building Competition in Energy Efficient Operation
November 21
2pm EST
Webinar
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1GNKTAcup6Ql9fhOkwVMZMyEw6W4LZWBHTQu13sJqkoQ/viewform
TOPIC: The Kilowatt Crackdown program offers the opportunity for community engagement and competitive dynamics among commercial buildings, in regards to energy efficiency goals. Through a process of benchmarking, auditing, implementation, and evaluation, energy savings can be accomplished. With a focus on operational recommendations, savings can be achieved at a relatively low cost. This session will summarize the goals and strategies of the Kilowatt Crackdown program, as well as commonly found energy efficiency measures.
PRESENTERS: JACK DAVIS - has over 18 years of experience in the energy, development, and marketing fields, and manages JDM’s West Coast clients. Advising clients on strategy development, program design and implementation, and market based environmental initiatives, Jack’s work has led to innovative programs and materials such as Carbon4Square, the Kilowatt Crackdown, the Green Building Opportunity Index, the Deep Retrofit Playbook, and the High Performance Portfolio Framework. Jack serves on the Urban Land Institute's (ULI) Responsible Property Investing Product Council and the ULI Northwest Advisory Board. Jack has a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University and a MBA in Marketing from the University of Minnesota.
KATIE LEICHLITER - Katie Leichliter is a Research Scientist at the University of Idaho – Integrated Design Lab in Boise. She conducts energy efficiency field work, measurement and verification, and operational and investment grade audits. Katie also conducts simulation research for energy efficiency in existing building renewal projects, and has developed stand-alone energy analysis tools. Katie graduated with a Bachelors and Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Idaho and spent three years in a private mechanical design practice specializing in BIM, building simulation, and HVAC design. Katie serves on the board of governors of the Idaho ASHRAE Chapter.
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Developing Safe Designs for an Uncertain Future
Thursday, November 21st
4:00pm
MIT, Building 3-370, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Christopher J. Wiernicki, Chairman, President and CEO, American Bureau of Shipping
The challenge for engineers of every description is to develop and apply technology in a way that improves how we live, work and play and does so in a practical, useable and understandable manner. Specifically, within the marine and offshore sectors, the focus will be on improving efficiency, reducing the overall environmental footprint, promoting sustainability to the greatest extent possible, and enhancing the safety of all those involved in a practical, techno- economically feasible manner.
The ship or offshore unit designer of today is using every technical capability in his or her toolbox to generate concepts that are right at the leading edge of known innovation, efficiency and safety. Yet those same designs will still be expected to be competitive many years into the future when we have no idea, now, what technologies will be available then, and even less idea what the commercial and regulatory environment will be like in which today’s vessel will be asked to operate.
It is a challenge that will welcome innovation which will spark the development of the technologies that will expand the Risk Frontier. It demands an holistic approach to the challenge from the outset, one that takes account of not just the structure, the machinery and equipment but the people who will use it, the operation of the asset, the integration of the systems on board, its life cycle maintenance - all the way through to decommissioning.
A key component in the development of these new designs will be a clearer understanding of risk. Proper assessment of the risks of a new design or the application of new technology demands an understanding of each element within a project and the interactions among them. This involves a three step Risk versus Risk Decision Making process that recognizes risk tradeoffs; assesses the risk alternatives by developing the Risk Protection Frontier and then reduces the overall risk by quantifying Risk Superior moves. Safety must be redefined and quantified in the context of Risk Superior moves if both the existing physical and technical boundaries are to be expanded. It will be technology breakthroughs such as isogeometric analysis, advanced simulation methods, the wider application of computational fluid dynamics and the development of nano-technology among others that will safely expand the risk frontier as it applies to the design of ship and offshore assets in the future.
The annual Wallace lecture program has been made possible by a gift from Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Chatfield, in honor of Mrs. Chatfield’s father, Robert Bruce Wallace, MIT 1898. As president of the American Ship Building Company, Mr. Wallace made major contributions to develop inland waterway shipping. This generous gift provides funding for the Robert Bruce Wallace Academic Prize and the Lecture Series. The academic prize consists of a stipend and a year’s full tuition at MIT awarded to a student in the Area of Ocean Science & Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering who has shown excellence in scholarship in Ocean Engineering and leadership in student affairs. The annual Lecture Series is presented by an eminent figure in the marine community.
Refreshments will be served before the seminar. Reception to follow.
Please contact Tony Pulsone at pulsone at mit.edu with any questions.
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Food Hubs: Local Food 2.0
Thu, Nov 21, 2013
4:00 PM EST
webinar
RSVP at https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/s/registrations/new?cid=crcrd2f7yfq3
Rowan Jacobsen
Rowan Jacobsen is the author of numerous books including A Geography of Oysters: The Connoisseur’s Guide to Oyster Eating in North America which won a 2008 James Beard Award. He has written for the New York Times, Harper’s, Outside, Mother Jones, Orion, and others, and his work has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing andBest Food Writing collections.
John Fisk
With extensive experience in sustainable food and agricultural systems development, John Fisk serves as the Director of the Wallace Center at Winrock International, a leading voice on innovative food systems like food hubs. He is a founding board member of the Food Routes Network and serves as an editorial board member of the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture.
Jean Hamilton
Jean Hamilton is Communications Director for Black River Produce, a food hub in Springfield, Vermont. She previously served as Market Development and Consumer Outreach Coordinator at Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, and has worked for numerous farms and artisan food producers.
The local food movement has grown remarkably fast in the last decade. There are scores of farmer's markets now, numbering over 7,800 in the U.S. alone at last count, which is almost double the 1994 tally. Plus grocery stores and menus increasingly trumpet their local selections, and food media has mushroomed as well.
But lately the movement has begun to hit a wall. For one thing, sales at farmer's markets have not kept pace with the growth, as there are simply more farmers competing for the same pool of customers.
What farmers and their allies increasingly need is a way to add value to their produce and increase its shelf life, places where they can cook or can fruits and vegetables, slaughter animals, process meat, and store products. But the costs and regulatory requirements are truly prohibitive, especially for people who already own and operate farms.
In the new issue of Orion, award-winning food writer Rowan Jacobsen looks at the recent growth of food hubs, facilities that house such services, as part of the magazine's new, two-year series, Reimagining Infrastructure. He visits Mad River Food Hub in Vermont and interviews people at others around the U.S. to hear what the challenges and opportunities are.
To learn more, read "From Farm to Table" in the November/December 2013 issue of Orion and plan to join him and a panel of guest experts to discuss his findings during a live event on November 21 at 4 p.m. Eastern/1 p.m. Pacific.
The call is also toll-free and only pre-registration is required, so please register at https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/s/registrations/new?cid=crcrd2f7yfq3
and mark your calendar for this unique event.
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Perspectives on Indoor Air Quality: Indoor Chemical Exposures and the Impact of the Human Body on These Exposures
Thursday, November 21, 2013
4:00p–5:00p
MIT, Building 48-316, 15 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Charles J. Weschler, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, Rutgers University
Environmental Sciences Seminar Series
Join us for a weekly series of EFM/Hydrology topics by MIT faculty and students, as well as guest lecturers from around the globe.
Web site: http://cee.mit.edu/events/318
Open to: the general public
Cost: free
Sponsor(s): Civil and Environmental Engineering
For more information, contact: Jacqueline Foster
617-255-4038
jafoster at mit.edu
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The Brand IDEA: Managing Nonprofit Brands with Integrity, Democracy and Affinity
WHEN Thu., Nov. 21, 2013, 4:15 – 5:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Belfer, Weil Town Hall, Lobby Level, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Lecture, Social Sciences, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Hauser Institute for Civil Society at the Center for Public Leadership
SPEAKER(S) NATHALIE LAIDLER-KYLANDER | Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
LINK http://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/hauser/news-events/upcoming-events/20131205
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Reverse Engineering Chinese Censorship
Thursday, November 21, 2013
4:15p–5:15p
MIT, Building E51-335, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Gary King
ORC Fall Seminar Series
The OR Center organizes a seminar series each year in which prominent OR professionals from around the world are invited to present topics in operations research. We have been privileged to have speakers from business and industry as well as from academia throughout the years. For a list of past distinguished speakers and their seminar topics, please visit our Seminar Archives.
ORC Fall Seminar Series
Seminar reception immediately following the talk.
Web site: http://web.mit.edu/orc/www/seminars/seminars.html
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Operations Research Center
For more information, contact:
Ross Anderson, Angela King, Benjamin Letham
253-6185
rma350 at mit.edu, aking10 at mit.edu, bletham at mit.edu
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"Adventures in Policy Modeling."
Thursday, November 21, 2013
4:15-5:30pm
MIT, Building E51-376, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Prof. Edward Kaplan, Yale
The MIT Sociotechnical Systems Research Center's occasional distinguished lecture series, "Designing Sociotechnical Systems for a Complex World."
A reception will follow.
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Smart Suits to Enable Astronaut Exploration of Mars
WHEN Thu., Nov. 21, 2013, 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sheerr Room, Fay House, 10 Garden Street Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Dava J. Newman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
COST Free and open to the public
NOTE Scan-Model-Innovate-Make-Explore! This talk presents advanced spacesuit concepts for human exploration of Mars as well as how these smart technologies can be used here on earth to enable enhanced locomotion.
LINK http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2013-dava-j-newman-lecture
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City Of Cambridge Resource Table
Thursday, November 21, 2013
5:00pm - 6:30pm
Venture Cafe - (Café Table) @ CIC, One Broadway, Cambridge
Description: The City of Cambridge is interested in supporting local entrepr eneurs to grow and stay in Cambridge. This month, staff from the Economic Development Division will be in the Café talking about other resources avai lable for Cambridge startups.
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Legatum Lecture: Obstacles and Opportunities to Delivering Financial Inclusion
Thursday, November 21, 2013
5:30p–6:30p
MIT, Building E25-111, MIT Whitaker, 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Ron Hynes, Group Executive, MasterCard Global Prepaid Solutions
MasterCard's vision is of a world beyond cash. At the core of their prepaid strategy is driving financial inclusion globally. More than half of the world's adult population is unbanked, lacking access to the basic financial tools each of us take for granted in our daily lives. This phenomenon is pervasive around the world; in developed markets like the U.S. and in many European countries, and it abounds in emerging economies.
MasterCard has been at the forefront of driving financial inclusion, working with governments, advocating regulations conducive to financial inclusion, developing and deploying market infrastructure and delivering tailored products and solutions for the underserved segment. They have also launched the Digital Food initiative with the World Food Program to strengthen its delivery of digital food, in the form of cash and vouchers, to the hungry poor around the world.
Join us for an informative lecture. Reception to follow.
Web site: http://legatum.mit.edu/our-programs/lectures/obstacles-and-opportunities-delivering-financial-inclusion
Open to: the general public
Cost: 0
Sponsor(s): Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship
For more information, contact: Agnes Hunsicker
617-324-2768
agnesh at mit.edu
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Seeing Earthquakes Before They Happen
Thursday, 11/21/2013
6:00pm
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street 1st Floor, Cambridge
A Harvard Museum of Natural History lecture with geophysicist Brendan Meade
Brendan Meade, using satellite technology, generates images of current fault-line activity to help predict earthquakes and to better understand earthquake cycles and the tectonic development of continents. Find out more about his research and the progress being made in predicting the timing and magnitude of earthquakes.
Free and open to the public.
http://www.hmnh.harvard.edu/lectures_and_special_events/index.php
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Eat Red Meat, Save the Planet - featuring Allan Savory and Mathieu Lalonde, Ph.D.
Thursday, November 21
6:00pm
Harvard Law School, Austin Hall, 1515 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
Join the Food Law Society for a special evening with Allan Savory of the Savory Institute and Harvard Chemist Mathieu Lalonde, Ph.D. Many of us have heard about some of the recent studies claiming that eating red meat is unhealthy. Dr. Lalonde will debunk these studies and illustrate how pasture-raised herbivores are actually ideal for human consumption. Then, Allan Savory will discuss how managing grazing animals through Holistic Planned Grazing, a strategic planning process that addresses the complexity of Nature, has reversed desertification and is bringing back to life once unusable land, and helping to reverse global warming.
Featuring speakers:
Mathieu Lalonde, Ph.D., Harvard Chemist
Mathieu Lalonde is an organic chemist with a genuine interest in human metabolism, nutritional biochemistry, health, and athletic performance. Mat obtained a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemistry from the University of Ottawa preceding his departure to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he attended Harvard University for a Doctorate in Organic Chemistry. Upon the completion of his Ph.D., Mat reconnected with his lifelong interest in nutrition and decided to apply the rigors of the core sciences to the primary literature published on nutrition. Mat aims to teach individuals how to 1) interpret published material such that they themselves can distinguish between legitimate versus unsound research, and 2) evaluate both the strengths and relevancies of the publications’ reported conclusions. Mat has recently developed an interest in nutrient density and is currently studying both chemical biology and nutritional biochemistry while working in Harvard's department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.
Allan Savory, Savory Institute
Allan was born in Rhodesia, southern Africa. He pursued an early career as a research biologist and Game Ranger in the British Colonial Service of what was then Northern Rhodesia (today Zambia), and later as a farmer, game rancher, politician, and international consultant, based in Southern Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe). In the 1960s, while working on the interrelated problems of increasing poverty and disappearing wildlife, he made a significant breakthrough in understanding what was causing the degradation and desertification of the world’s grassland ecosystems. He went on to work, as a resource management consultant, with numerous managers, eventually on four continents, to develop sustainable solutions.
His early results in reversing land degradation in a manner that made, rather than cost, money were impressive. But, as he often states, his failures were equally impressive! Finally, in the mid-1980’s the last of some key missing pieces fell into place. Since then thousands of land, livestock and wildlife managers have been able to demonstrate consistent results following the methodology he called “holistic management.”
Savory served as a Member of Parliament in the latter days of Zimbabwe’s civil war and leader of the opposition to the ruling party headed by Ian Smith. Exiled in 1979, as a result of his opposition, he emigrated to the United States where he cofounded the non-profit organization Holistic Management International with his wife, Jody Butterfield. In 1992 they formed a second non-profit (social welfare) organization near Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, the Africa Centre for Holistic Management, donating a ranch that would serve as a learning site for people all over Africa. Savory and the five local Chiefs are permanent Trustees of the Africa Centre. Savory and his wife divide their time between Zimbabwe and New Mexico.
In 2003, Savory was awarded the Banksia International Award for the person or organization doing the most for the environment on a global scale. His current work in Africa is receiving much praise and recognition and the Africa Centre for Holistic Management was announced the winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Award for the organization working to solve the world’s most pressing problems.
To register, visit eatredmeat.eventbrite.com.
There is also a separate bundled dinner/lecture option. For $125 you'll receive a VIP ticket to the lecture and to the Savory Institute's gluten-free gourmet dinner being prepared by the chefs at Upstairs on the Square. Registration for the dinner/lecture combination can be found here and there is no need to reserve a separate lecture ticket in that case.
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LocalFoodBiz Culinary Entrepreneur Connection: Media
Thursday, November 21, 2013
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
CropCircle Kitchen, Inc., 31 Germania Street, Building I & J, Jamaica Plain
RSVP at http://www.meetup.com/localfoodbiz/events/146284332/
Come to our Third Thursday #LocalFoodBiz Happy Hour -- the go-to place for food entrepreneurs to meet up, chat, and learn from one another, all with a cold Sam Adams brew in hand. This month, November, we will have the chance to learn from food media industry experts: Ilene Bezahler and Kate Boland from Edible Boston and Nina Gallant with Nina Gallant Photography. They will give us advice from their end about how and when to go about using media and photography with your small food business.
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ETH Zürich Alumni and Swissnex Boston Lecture
Thursday, November 21, 2013
6:30pm
swissnex Boston, 420 Broadway, Cambridge
Ralph Spolenak, Nanometallurgy, ETH Zurich
Colors are the first thing we appreciate about a material, usually before we even touch it or in a more sophisticated manner investigate it microscopically. This talk will investigate how the microstructure, the architecture and the chemistry of a thin film material influences its interaction with photons in the visible energy range. Examples will be given from all materials classes and the phenomena or interference (strong and weak), inference, as well as band structure induced colors will be described. Applications will be given in the biomedical field, microelectronics and jewelry. Briefly, other application-driven properties of coatings will be addressed, which range from fracture strength over wear resistance, to electrochemical stability.
Speaker Bio
Prof. Spolenak was born August 17, 1971 in Wels, Austria. He studied physics at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria. After completing his diploma thesis in the field of solid state physics in 1995, and a brief research term at the University of Pavia, Italy, he moved to Stuttgart, Germany, to commence his PhD work at the Max-Planck-Institute for Metals Research and the University of Stuttgart. In 1999 he completed his dissertation on Alloying effects in electromigration and was subsequently awarded the Max Planck Society's Otto Hahn medal for his achievements during his thesis.
In 1999 Prof. Spolenak was hired as a Postdoctoral Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies in the USA. There he was working on the mechanical properties of thin metal films. During this time he became a member of the principal research team to establish the first dedicated Laue microdiffraction beamline at the Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. After a year as a visiting scientist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, he returned to the Max-Planck-Institute in 2002 to serve as a group leader in the department of Prof. E. Arzt.
Ralph Spolenak has been promoted to tenured Associate Professor on June 1st, and is currently serving as the director of the Materials Research Center (MRC) of ETH Zurich and as the chairman of the Electron Microscopy Center (EMEZ) board.
The main research interests of Prof. Spolenak's group are the mechanical properties of metals at the nanoscale and how these properties can be influenced by metallurgical approaches. The combination of testing, characterization and modeling are essential for making significant advances in this field. This comprises the development of new, mostly synchrotron based, in situ testing methods that allow for analysis at the nanoscale. Prof. Spolenak has been organizing several symposia at international conferences and is organizing the work group Interconnect systems for microelectronic devices for the German Society of Materials (DGM).
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Dirty Energy
Thursday, November 21
doors open 6:40; film starts promptly 7pm
243 Broadway, Cambridge - corner of Broadway and Windsor, entrance on Windsor
rule19.org/videos <http://rule19.org/videos>
*Just in times for Xmas: a limited quantity of original DVDs will be available for $10 ea.*
Showing ...., in Cambridge [please download & distribute flyer
<http://rule19.org/download-film/film-131121-Dirty%20Energy.pdf>
This film packs a wallop! It has stunning visuals and a gripping tale of greed and corruption. You'll see up-close and personal what mainstream media and our government would rather you didn't.
On April 20th, 2010, the *Deepwater Horizon* oil rig exploded off the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven BP workers and spewing 200 million barrels of oil into the ocean.
*DIRTY ENERGY* brings to light the personal stories of the Louisiana fishermen and local residents directly impacted by the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Filmmaker Bryan D. Hopkins gains intimate access to the lives and homes of these people, as they struggle to rebuild their lives and contend with emerging health crises related to the toxic dispersants used to clean up the spill.
DIRTY ENERGY paints a poignant portrait of the human cost of the calamity, and the systematic failure by BP and the U.S. Government to effectively and transparently manage the environmental impact.
Three years after the disaster, thousands of families who have lost their livelihood, their health and/or family members are still waiting for recompense while BP maneuvers to try and avoid making full compensation payments.
"/The greatest environmental disaster with no end in sight! Eleven workers dead. Millions of gallons of oil gushing for months (and years) to come. Jobs vanishing. Creatures dying. A pristine environment destroyed for generations. A mega-corporation that has lied and continues to lie, and a government that refuses to protect the people/." ~Seize BP
"/BP is now engaged in an aggressive legal and public-relations campaign to limit how much it pays individuals and businesses for the losses its reckless behavior caused./"
~Stephen Teague, June, 2013, NYT Op-Ed
"/It takes some cheek to go and use a sunflower logo when your business is dirty oil" ~ /Ben Stewart, Greenpeace activist
/"We ought to take him offshore and dunk him 10 feet underwater and pull him up and ask him 'What's that all over your face?/"
~Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, about BP CEO Tony Hayward
Please join us for a stimulating night out; bring your friends!
*free film, free refreshments, & free door prizes.**
**[donations are encouraged]*
"/You can't legislate good will - that comes through education/." ~ Malcolm X
*UPandOUT film series* - see http://rule19.org/videos
Why should YOU care? It's YOUR money that pays for US/Israeli wars - on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Libya. Syria, Iran, So America, etc etc - for billionaire bailouts, for ever more ubiquitous US prisons, for the loss of liberty and civil rights…
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Urban Films: King Corn (2007)
Thursday, November 21, 2013
7:00p–9:00p
MIT, Building 3-133, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Special Thanksgiving feature. A feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In the film, two friends move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat---and how we farm. Directed by Aaron Woolf; written and featuring Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, with a special appearance by Michael Pollan. Winner: George Foster Peabody Award; Official selection: SXSW; Big Sky Documentary Film Festival; Chicago International Documentary Film Festival. 88 minutes.
Urban Planning Film Series
A mostly-weekly series showing documentary and feature films on topics related to cities, urbanism, design, community development, ecology, and other planning issues. Free.
Web site: urbanfilm.org
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Urban Studies and Planning
For more information, contact: Ezra Glenn
617-253-2024
eglenn at mit.edu
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Notes from Underwater: A Life Growing Delectable Bivalves and How Shellfish Aquaculture Can Change the World
November 21
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
NE Aquarium, Simons IMAX Theatre, 1 Central Wharf, Boston
RSVP at http://support.neaq.org/site/Calendar?id=104701&view=Detail
Barbara and Patrick Woodbury, Woodbury Shellfish and
Michael Tlusty, PhD, director of research, New England Aquarium
Barbara and Patrick Woodbury, marine biologists and clam and oyster growers in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, will talk about shellfish aquaculture, sustainability and the key role bivalves play in coastal marine ecosystems. The life of a grower tracks the life cycle of the shellfish they grow. Follow the challenges of grower and grown from hatchery to harvest as sustainable seafood. The world-wide destruction of shellfish habitat and oyster reefs has put coastal marine ecosystems at risk. The Woodbury’s will tell how keystone species like clams and oysters have a dramatic impact on improving water quality, increasing species diversity and reducing coastal erosion and describe how their own research on oyster larval recruitment will help with oyster restoration.
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Friday, November 22
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Energy Innovation and Israel: Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP)
8:00a–10:00a
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Prof. Gideon Grader, Director - Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP)
Prof. Gideon Grader will talk about the energy related efforts at the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP). The program is bringing together the best science and engineering researchers to work in a broad interdisciplinary track to discover and exploit alternative and renewable energy sources, to search for and develop alternative non-carbon based fuels, to seek solutions for more efficient energy use, and to reduce the environmental damage caused by the production and burning of fossil fuels. Prof. Grader will also share about opportunities for research collaboration for faculty and internship opportunities for students.
Agenda:
8-8:30 Networking and refreshments
8:30-9:30 Program
9:30-10:00 Networking
Web site: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1bjeF12N9IsC7VPd-eMKv4xIsm3VbWWtPWT5Y8qN-g_k/viewform
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): MISTI MIT-Israel Program, Center for International Studies, MIT Energy Club, MIT Sloan Energy and Environment Club, MIT Energy Initiative, New England-Israel Business Council (NEIBC),American Technion Society
For more information, contact: David Dolev
617-324-5581
ddolev at mit.edu
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Managing Holistically: Policies and Actions to Restore and Sustain Ecosystem Services
Friday, November 22, 2013
9:00a-12:00p
Tufts, ASEAN Auditorium, The Fletcher School, 170 Packard Avenue, Medford
Allan Savory, Rancher and Restoration Ecologist, Founder of the Savory Institute and originator of the Holistic Management approach to restoring grasslands, winner of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award, and finalist in the Virgin Earth Challenge (watch his January 2013 presentation at Fletcher at http://fletcher.tufts.edu/CIERP/News/more/Allan-Savory-Fletcher-Jan2013)
Hosted by CIERP's Agriculture, Forests, and Biodiversity Program
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Towards Usable Robots for All
Friday, November 22, 2013
11:00am - 12:00pm
MIT, Building E14-633, MIT Media Lab, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Tessa Lau
About a year ago, knowing nothing about robotics, Tessa Lau joined Willow Garage with one mission: to create robots so easy to use that everyone, including persons with disabilities, could use them to improve their lives. From an HCI researcher's perspective, robotics is a very rich field: incredibly complex systems which are sorely in need of good design and usable interfaces. Because of their complexity, merely using robots requires precise specification of what they should do: in short, programming. Yet how can we expect mere mortals to program robots? In this talk Lau will detail what it is about robotics that makes programming difficult for end users, and propose a few strategies that may help get more robots out into the world.
Biography: Dr. Tessa Lau is Chief Robot Whisperer and co-founder at Savioke, where she is creating a new generation of usable robots for the service industry. Previously, Dr. Lau was a Research Scientist at Willow Garage, where she led an effort to develop simple interfaces for personal robots based on end user programming. She also spent 11 years at IBM Research developing end user programming systems for enterprises. More generally, Dr. Lau's research is in the area of intelligent user interfaces: combining techniques from artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction to create systems that enhance human productivity and creativity. She has served on organizing and program committees for major AI and HCI conferences and journals. She also served on the board of CRA-W, the CRA committee on the status of women in computing research. Dr. Lau holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Washington.
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"The Information Revolution and the Future of Transportation."
Friday, November 22, 2013
11:45a–1:00p
MIT, Building W20-306, 84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Lunch served at 11:45am. Lecture begins at noon.
Brian Legan, Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton
Our digital footprint is growing rapidly, with more data being created, transferred, shared, and stored than ever before. Advanced analytics can leverage this multi-stream and multi-platform data to provide innovation that will drive a faster, safer, and more efficient transportation future. However, major hurdles must be overcome to maximize the benefits that can be provided by our expanding digital footprints. Learn how we may best address the technical, financial, political, and organizational challenges to achieve the promise of this information revolution.
MIT CTL Distinguished Speaker Series
Every semester two students from the MIT Transportation Students Group, which is a coalition of graduate students in the Master of Science in Transportation program and the PhD program in transportation, organize the MIT CTL Distinguished Speaker Series in Transportation. This speaker series brings at least three speakers to MIT's campus in Cambridge each semester from fields that are studied by members of the Transportation Students Group, including transit, airlines, high speed rail, and intelligent transportation systems.
The lectures are free and open to the MIT community. Complimentary light lunch is provided.
Web site:http://ctl.mit.edu/events/distinguished_speaker_series_brian_legan_vice_president_booz_allen_hamilton
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Center for Transportation & Logistics
For more information, contact: Sarah Smith
617-253-4592
sajsmith at gmail.com
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Easan Drury, NREL
Friday, November 22, 2013
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street Cambridge
Easan Drury, Energy Forecasting and Modeling Group, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/staff/e_drury.html
Environmental Science and Engineering Seminars
Host: Xi Lu
Email: xilu at fas.harvard.edu
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Sea Level Rise on Coastal Urban Design
Friday, November 22, 2013
1:30p–2:30p
MIT, Building 66-168, 25 Ames Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Nina Chase from Sasaki
Come and learn about the Sea Level Rise research at Sasaki and how does that affect the coastal urban planning and architecture design
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): MIT Water Club
For more information, contact: David Cohen-Tanugi
waterclub-officers at mit.edu
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Chasing Ice: Free Film Screening + Ice Cream (Fossil Free MIT)
Friday, November 22, 2013
4:00p–6:00p
MIT, Building 35-225, 127 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join Fossil Free MIT for a free special public screening of the award-winning documentary Chasing Ice (2012), the story of National Geographic photographer James Balog's mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of climate change. Overcoming seemingly insurmountable weather conditions and technical challenges, Balog and his team of young adventurers deployed time-lapse cameras across the Arctic to capture the world's glaciers as they melted over the course of several years.
Free and open to the public. Free ice cream (dairy and vegan options available) will be served!
Web site: fossilfreemit.org
Open to: the general public
Cost: free
Sponsor(s): Fossil Free MIT
For more information, contact: Patrick Brown
574-721-5093
fossilfree at mit.edu
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Sunday, November 24
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Autumn Convergence for a New National Agenda
Sunday, November 24th
1:00 to 5:30 PM
SEIU Local 615, 26 West Street, Boston (across from Park St Station)
The chain that bound us yesterday will be the link that connects us today.
Featuring:
Ben Thompson, climate activist, 350MA
Harris Gruman, SEIU political director
Leslie Cagan, peace, LGBT, and justice organizer
Neta Crawford, professor of political science at BU
AND YOU!
Many agree that we need to forge a more democratic nation based on social justice, sustainability, employment, and peace. Our groups share many values, aspirations, and goals as we work on the important issues. But to turn things around we need a vision of a new economy, a just society, and a new foreign policy that connects the issues -- a vision that can mobilize a social movement toward a society that works for everyone. We need a message that points more clearly to the future we seek.
This convergence relies on conversation—listening and talking with each other. Join in roundtable discussions about how we can create a positive common vision that can bring peace, climate, economic, and social justice activists together to become a more powerful force for change.
For more information, seemasspeaceaction.org/event/covergence-2013
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Monday, November 25
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MIT Humanitarian Speaker Series: Rich Serino, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Monday, November 25, 2013
11:45a–1:00p
MIT, Building E51-615, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Rich Serino, Deputy Administrator of FEMA
In this installment, "Logistics and Innovation at FEMA: Lessons from the Past and a Direction for the Future," Rich Serino, Deputy Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will discuss his experiences at FEMA and innovations for the future.
Richard Serino was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate as FEMA's Deputy Administrator in 2009. In this role, he works directly with Administrator Craig Fugate to promote the "whole community" approach to emergency management, which seeks to build, sustain, and improve the Department's capacity to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards. Drawing on 35 years of state and local emergency management, Mr. Serino strives to improve FEMA programs through financial accountability, improving the use of analytics to drive decisions, advancing the workforce, and fostering a culture of innovation.
Humanitarian Logistics Lecture Series
The Humanitarian Logistics Lecture Series talks, organized by the MIT CTL Humanitarian Response Lab, are free and open to the MIT community. Refreshments are provided with support from the Center for International Studies.
Web site:http://ctl.mit.edu/events/mit_humanitarian_speaker_series_rich_serino_federal_emergency_management_agency_fema
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Center for Transportation & Logistics
For more information, contact: Sarah Smith
617-253-4592
sajsmith at mit.edu
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Refining the climate role of tropical cyclones: Key constituents of the summer Hadley cell?
November 25, 2013
12pm-1pm
MIT, Building 54-915 (the tallest building on campus)
Benjamin Schenkel (SUNY Albany)
Abstract: An important focus of ongoing research in tropical meteorology is why there are, on average, 60 tropical cyclones (TCs) in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) per year and how this number may vary in response to climate change. Greater understanding of current and future trends in TC activity may be achieved by determining whether TCs have a substantial impact upon the climate. While the precise atmospheric role of TCs in climate remains uncertain, recent research has suggested that TCs may play a role in atmospheric meridional heat transports given the strong correlation between aggregate TC activity and meridional heat transports during the following winter. Building upon prior work, the present study seeks to advance our understanding of the potential climate role of TCs by quantifying whether TCs are responsible for transporting significant quantities of total energy (i.e., sum of kinetic energy, latent energy, potential energy, and sensible heat) from the NH tropics into the Southern Hemisphere (SH) tropics during the peak of TC season.
Speaker's website: http://www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/schenkel/
MASS Seminar
Web site: http://eaps-www.mit.edu/paoc/events/mass-seminar-benjamin-schenkel-suny-albany
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate (PAOC), Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact:
mass at mit.edu
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Logistics and Innovation at FEMA: Lessons from the Past and a Direction for the Future
Monday, November 25th
12-1pm
Lunch will be served at 11:45 am
MIT, Building E51-315, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Richard Serino, Deputy Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Richard Serino was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate as FEMA's Deputy Administrator in 2009. In this role, he works directly with Administrator Craig Fugate to promote the "whole community" approach to emergency management, which seeks to build, sustain, and improve the Department's capacity to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards. Drawing on 35 years of state and local emergency management, Mr. Serino strives to improve FEMA programs through financial accountability, improving the use of analytics to drive decisions, advancing the workforce, and fostering a culture of innovation.
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ETIP: Title TBA
Monday, November 25
12pm-1:30pm
Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, HKS, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Rawi Abdelal, Herbert F. Johnson Professor of International Management, Harvard Business School
ETIP/Consortium Energy Policy Seminar Series
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/cepr/
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
louisa_lund at hks.harvard.edu
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Interrogating the Anthropocene
Monday, November 25, 2013
12:15pm to 2:00pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin Room 119, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Andrew Barry (University College London, Human Geography)
The STS Circle at Harvard is a group of doctoral students and recent PhDs who are interested in creating a space for interdisciplinary conversations about contemporary issues in science and technology that are relevant to people in fields such as anthropology, history of science, sociology, STS, law, government, public policy, and the natural sciences. We want to engage not only those who are working on intersections of science, politics, and public policy, but also those in the natural sciences, engineering, and architecture who have serious interest in exploring these areas together with social scientists and humanists.
There has been growing interest among graduate students and postdocs at Harvard in more systematic discussions related to STS. More and more dissertation writers and recent graduates find themselves working on exciting topics that intersect with STS at the edges of their respective home disciplines, and they are asking questions that often require new analytic tools that the conventional disciplines don’t necessarily offer. They would also like wider exposure to emerging STS scholarship that is not well-represented or organized at most universities, including Harvard. Our aim is to try to serve those interests through a series of activities throughout the academic year.
All meetings will take place on Mondays, from 12:15–2 pm, in Maxwell Dworkin, Room 119, unless otherwise noted. Sandwich lunches are provided. Please RSVP to sts at hks.harvard.edu by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
Science, Technology and Society seminars
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Welfare Effects of Lengthened Copyright Protection
Monday, November 25, 2013
2:30p–4:00p
MIT, Building E62-650, 100 Main Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Imke Reimers (NBER & Northeastern)
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): IO Workshop
For more information, contact:
Theresa Benevento
theresa at mit.edu
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State Capacity and Economic Development: A Network Approach
Monday, November 25, 2013
4:00p–5:30p
MIT, Building E51-151, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Daron Acemoglu (MIT)
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Public Finance/Labor Workshop
For more information, contact:
Economics Calendar
econ-cal at mit.edu
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"India’s Energy Scenario: View from the States"
Monday, November 25, 2013
5:15pm
Littauer Building, Fainsod Room (Room 324), Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Sudhir Kumar, Indian Administrative Service, Former Secretary of Power, Government of Bihar
Gulzar Natarajan, Indian Administrative Service, Former Managing Director, Eastern Power Distribution Company Ltd., Government of Andhra Pradesh
South Asia Institute Science Technology and Energy Seminar
Co-sponsored with Harvard Kennedy School’s Sustainability Science Program.
http://southasiainstitute.harvard.edu/event/indias-energy-scenario-view-from-the...
Contact Name: Meghan Smith
meghansmith at fas.harvard.edu
(617) 496-4289
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Firm Performance and Wages: Evidence from Across the Corporate Hierarchy
Monday, November 25, 2013
5:30p–7:00p
MIT, Building E19-758, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
Speaker: John Van Reenen (LSE)
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Applied Theory Workshop (Joint MIT/Harvard)
For more information, contact:
Theresa Benevento
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Modernist Cuisine
Book signing following the lecture.
WHEN Mon., Nov. 25, 2013, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Science Center Hall C, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
SPEAKER(S) Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft CTO; co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures; and author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking
COST Free and open to the public
NOTE The Science & Cooking lecture series runs weekly through the end of the fall semester. A full schedule, including the lecture topics, is available at seas.harvard.edu….
Each talk will begin with a 15-minute lecture by a Faculty member of the course, which will discuss one of the scientific topics from that week's class.
For a sample of what is to come, an archive of past talks (from 2010, 2011, and 2012) can be viewed at YouTube.com/Harvard
The popular public lecture series grew out of a collaboration between the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Alícia Foundation in Spain. A related Harvard College course, “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter," which will be offered to undergraduates for the fourth time in the fall of 2013, uses food and cooking to explicate fundamental principles in applied physics and engineering. Blending haute cuisine with laboratory research, the chefs and food experts teach alongside Harvard faculty members. In addition to lectures and readings, lab work is an integral part of the course, and students perform experiments on topics including heat transfer, viscosity and elasticity, and crystallization and entropy.
This year, for the first time, a version of the Science & Cooking course will also be offered through HarvardX, Harvard University's newest online learning initiative. Registration for SPU27x, the massively open online course (MOOC), is open now at harvardx.harvard.edu.
The Science & Cooking Lecture Series does not replicate the content of either the Harvard College course or the HarvardX online course; rather, these public events are simply meant to inform and inspire with a fresh perspective on culinary science. For more information, visit http://www.seas.harvard.edu/cooking
LINK http://www.seas.harvard.edu/cooking
Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft CTO; co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures; and author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking and Modernist Cuisine
Science and Cooking
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ACT Lecture | Tarek Elhaik: The Incurable-Image
Monday, November 25, 2013
7:00p–9:00p
MIT, Building E15-001, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Tarek Elhaik
Tarek Elhaik's talk sheds doubt about the proliferation of medial acts deployed under the banner of the "Social." It is in fact still unclear how social media and art practices have emerged as the dominant creative horizons for resisting neo-liberal forms of mediation. Building on his ethnography of curatorial laboratories in Mexico City, Elhaik proposes the concept of the "Incurable-Image" as a point of departure for thinking and working through the malaise of contemporary curatorial and moving-image culture, offering another use of Deleuze's Notes on Societies of Control.
Tarek Elhaik is a media anthropologist, film curator, and Assistant Professor of Media and Culture at San Francisco State University. His work is informed by archival research on Mexican and Latin American avant-garde film and experimental media arts and the ethnography of curatorial laboratories in Mexico City. He has curated several experimental film programs from Latin America and the Arab world at the Pacific Film Archive, Ruhrtriennale, San Francisco Cinematheque, Tangiers Cinematheque, Rice University, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His writings have appeared in books and journals including Framework, Revista de Antropologia Social, and Critical Arts. He is currently completing a manuscript titled The Incurable-Image: Repetition & Curation on a Tri-Continental Scene.
Experiments in Thinking, Action, and Form: Cinematic Migrations
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Department of Architecture
For more information, contact: Laura Anca Chichisan
617-253-5229
act at mit.edu
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Tuesday, November 26
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"An Open Conversation about Internet Communications Privacy"
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
4:00pm to 5:30pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin G115, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Ladar Levison, Lavabit founder and activist
Abstract: Ladar Levison will present a short summary of his motivations for building Lavabit, the U.S. government's attempts to access the emails of his 410,000 users, and his response: challenging the government's requests in court and starting the Darkmail Alliance. He will then open the discussion to questions. This event aims to provide insight into the state of our online communications' security and the role of the U.S. government therein. Come with general questions about internet privacy, specific questions about the technical, legal, and political systems in play, or just to listen.
Bio: Ladar Levison was born and raised in San Francisco, California. After graduating from Thurgood Marshall Academic High School, he attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas. In the wake of the Patriot Act, 2004, Mr. Levison founded Nerdshack, LLC; a company dedicated to providing free and anonymous email service. Over the next ten years, Mr. Levison expanded his business and renamed the company Lavabit, LLC. As of August 2013, Lavabit had expanded to be an email service for over 400,000 users, 100,000 of which paid for Mr. Levison’s services. On August 8, 2013, Mr. Levison made the difficult decision to shut down his business after, in his words, “refusing to be complicit in crimes against the American people.” Now, he balances his work in the technology sector under the Darkmail Alliance with activism and advocacy projects for the protection of internet privacy.
Special CRCS Seminar
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Green tech Entrepreneur Forum & Brainstorming.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Eastern Bank, 647 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Green-Tech-and-Energy/events/150116912/
You can see into the conference room from the street. Details Below.
The Agenda is:
We will introduce ourselves and tell about our interest, expertise or work (1st hr)
You can give a ~3 to 5 minute elevator speach about your startup if you would like. (We will divide the 1st hour by # of people.)
What stage is your ideas or startup? What is your goal?
Tell what personnel or additional expertise, funding, etc. you are seeking,
Discussion and Brainstorming on (2nd hr)
ideas for viable moneymaking startups,
methods of collaboration, networking, forming teams & partnerships etc.
marketing, media, social media, ideas that have worked well for publicity
Agencies, websites, companies that assist startups
Boston Greenfest & Gov't opportunities.
What would ou like to see in future meetups?
Seminars - We will have seminars by Sustainable Energy engineers and other tech experts as often as possible.
The bank is near the center of Central Sq., where Prospect and Mass Ave cross, - there is a Starbucks on the Northeast corner of the intersection. Next to Starbucks is a Flower shop, and next to that is Eastern Bank. You can see the conference room thru the window, so just wave to us and we will let you in.
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Upcoming
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Double Dividend: Environmental Taxes and Fiscal Reform
Monday, December 2
12pm-1:30pm
Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, HKS, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Dale Jorgenson, Samuel W. Morris University Professor, Harvard University
ETIP/Consortium Energy Policy Seminar Series
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/cepr/
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
louisa_lund at hks.harvard.edu
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“Weather, Salience of Climate Change, and Congressional Voting”
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
4:10pm - 5:30pm
Harvard, Littauer L-382, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
Erich Muehlegger, Harvard University, and Evan Herrnstadt, University of Michigan
Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k96249
Contact Name: Jason Chapman
Jason_Chapman at harvard.edu
For further information, contact Professor Stavins at the Kennedy School (617-495-1820), Professor Weitzman at the Department of Economics (617-495-5133), or the course assistant, Jason Chapman (617-496-8054), or visit the seminar web site.
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"The Power of Promise: Examining the Feasibility of A Rapid Expansion of Nuclear Energy in India."
Friday, December 6, 2013
12:00pm - 1:30pm
Bell Hall, Belfer Building, 5th Floor, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
M. V. Ramana, Nuclear Futures Laboratory & Program on Science and Global Security, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs Princeton University
Science, Technology, and Engineering Seminar
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
Louisa_Lund at hks.harvard.edu
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IdeaStorm- High School Student Entrepreneurship Event
When: Saturday, December 7, 2013
1:00pm - 4:00pm
Microsoft NERD Center 1 Memorial Drive Cambridge
RSVP at http://youngentrepreneurchallenge.com/ideastorm/
Description: IdeaStorm is a mini-version of the Young Entrepreneur Challenge for high school students. And the best part? It's free!
Come into Boston and join other local high school students in a down and dirty brainstorming and business pitch event.
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"Manipulation of Day-ahead Electricity Prices through Virtual Bidding"
Monday, December 9, 2013
12:00pm - 1:30pm
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, HKS, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Lunch will be provided
with Chiara LoPrete, HUCE Fellow
ETIP/Consortium Energy Policy Seminar Series
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/cepr/
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
louisa_lund at hks.harvard.edu
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Time Trade Circle Orientation
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
12:30 PM to 1:30 PM
Cambridge Community Center, 5 Callender Street, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.meetup.com/Greater-Boston-area-freegan-and-dumpster-diving-meetup/events/150691282/
I am not attending these (I am already a member) but I thought I'd post them FYI. These are orientations for joining the Time Trade Circle. (You have to attend one orientation to join.)
The TTC is an alternative economy where people trade services for hours, not money. All services are (more-or-less) valued equally, so each hour of work you do is an hour put in your account that you can then spend on someone else's services. Anyway, it being not about money, I thought TTC seemed like a freegan notion, so I thought I'd share here:
https://hourworld.org/bank/?hw=1079
These meetings will be led by Carol. Materials will also be available in Braille. Children are welcome. Please try to arrive on time!
Directions to the Cambridge Community Center
(Wheelchair accessible space):
From Central Square (on the T red line), walk out Western Avenue. There is a traffic light at Howard Street, and a small convenience store on the corner. Turn right. The Center is about 150' from there, on your left, at the corner of Howard & Callender: a large red building with stairs and a ramp in front.
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How Does Thoreau Matter? Environmentalism and the Changing American Landscape
Wednesday, December 11
6 pm
Harvard Museum of Natural History, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Free and open to the public
Henry David Thoreau is widely viewed as an icon of the conservation movement and an early champion of America's pastoral landscapes. But do we read Thoreau accurately, or are we missing key parts of his message? What kind of landscape vision might Thoreau advocate were he living within today's complex environmental movement? Environmental historians Conevery Bolton Valencius, Brian Donahue, and ecologist David Foster will explore Thoreau's relevance to our lives today. Reception to follow discussion in the HMNH’s new exhibit, Thoreau’s Maine Woods: A Journey in Photographs with Scot Miller.
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Opportunity
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Holyoke, MA Zero Net Energy Student Design Competition
http://www.neseastudentdesigncompetition.org
Register by November 30, 2013
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Sustainable Minds®, a Cambridge Innovation Center startup, has developed a cloud-based tool that makes it easier to “design greener products right, from the start.” Their Sustainable Minds software lets product designers explore, up front, the environmental impacts of design decisions throughout a product’s life cycle, from materials and manufacturing, to consumables and energy use, to end-of-life considerations such as recycling and waste. More info: http://ist.mit.edu/news/sustainable_minds
Subscriptions Available!
This year the Director of the Sustainability Initiative at Sloan signed up for 100 Sustainable Minds subscriptions. They’ve reserved 30 subscriptions for their courses; 70 are available at no cost to MIT community members. They hope that teams developing products for competitions around campus will jump on the chance to use the software. Contact Jason Jay (jjay at mit.edu) to inquire about the subscription.
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Where is the best yogurt on the planet made? Somerville, of course!
Join the Somerville Yogurt Making Cooperative and get a weekly quart of the most thick, creamy, rich and tart yogurt in the world. Membership in the coop costs $2.50 per quart. Members share the responsibility for making yogurt in our kitchen located just outside of Davis Sq. in FirstChurch. No previous yogurt making experience is necessary.
For more information checkout.
https://sites.google.com/site/somervilleyogurtcoop/home
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Cambridge Residents: Free Home Thermal Images
Have you ever wanted to learn where your home is leaking heat by having an energy auditor come to your home with a thermal camera? With that info you then know where to fix your home so it's more comfortable and less expensive to heat. However, at $200 or so, the cost of such a thermal scan is a big chunk of change.
HEET Cambridge has now partnered with Sagewell, Inc. to offer Cambridge residents free thermal scans.
Sagewell collects the thermal images by driving through Cambridge in a hybrid vehicle equipped with thermal cameras. They will scan every building in Cambridge (as long as it's not blocked by trees or buildings or on a private way). Building owners can view thermal images of their property and an analysis online. The information is password protected so that only the building owner can see the results.
Homeowners, condo-owners and landlords can access the thermal images and an accompanying analysis free of charge. Commercial building owners and owners of more than one building will be able to view their images and analysis for a small fee.
The scans will be analyzed in the order they are requested.
Go to Sagewell.com. Type in your address at the bottom where it says "Find your home or building" and press return. Then click on "Here" to request the report.
That's it. When the scans are done in a few weeks, your building will be one of the first to be analyzed. The accompanying report will help you understand why your living room has always been cold and what to do about it.
With knowledge, comes power (or in this case saved power and money, not to mention comfort).
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Free solar electricity analysis for MA residents
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHhwM202dDYxdUZJVGFscnY1VGZ3aXc6MQ
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HEET has partnered with NSTAR and Mass Save participating contractor Next Step Living to deliver no-cost Home Energy Assessments to Cambridge residents.
During the assessment, the energy specialist will:
Install efficient light bulbs (saving up to 7% of your electricity bill)
Install programmable thermostats (saving up to 10% of your heating bill)
Install water efficiency devices (saving up to 10% of your water bill)
Check the combustion safety of your heating and hot water equipment
Evaluate your home’s energy use to create an energy-efficiency roadmap
If you get electricity from NSTAR, National Grid or Western Mass Electric, you already pay for these assessments through a surcharge on your energy bills. You might as well use the service.
Please sign up at http://nextsteplivinginc.com/heet/?outreach=HEET or call Next Step Living at 866-867-8729. A Next Step Living Representative will call to schedule your assessment.
HEET will help answer any questions and ensure you get all the services and rebates possible.
(The information collected will only be used to help you get a Home Energy Assessment. We won’t keep the data or sell it.)
(If you have any questions or problems, please feel free to call HEET’s Jason Taylor at 617 441 0614.)
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Resource
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Sustainable Business Network Local Green Guide
SBN is excited to announce the soft launch of its new Local Green Guide, Massachusetts' premier Green Business Directory!
To view the directory please visit: http://www.localgreenguide.org
To find out how how your business can be listed on the website or for sponsorship opportunities please contact Adritha at adritha at sbnboston.org
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Free Monthly Energy Analysis
CarbonSalon is a free service that every month can automatically track your energy use and compare it to your past energy use (while controlling for how cold the weather is). You get a short friendly email that lets you know how you’re doing in your work to save energy.
https://www.carbonsalon.com/
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Boston Food System
"The Boston Food System [listserv] provides a forum to post announcements of events, employment opportunities, internships, programs, lectures, and other activities as well as related articles or other publications of a non-commercial nature covering the area's food system - food, nutrition, farming, education, etc. - that take place or focus on or around Greater Boston (broadly delineated)."
The Boston area is one of the most active nationwide in terms of food system activities - projects, services, and events connected to food, farming, nutrition - and often connected to education, public health, environment, arts, social services and other arenas. Hundreds of organizations and enterprises cover our area, but what is going on week-to-week is not always well publicized.
Hence, the new Boston Food System listserv, as the place to let everyone know about these activities. Specifically:
Use of the BFS list will begin soon, once we get a decent base of subscribers. Clarification of what is appropriate to announce and other posting guidelines will be provided as well.
It's easy to subscribe right now at https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/bfs
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Artisan Asylum http://artisansasylum.com/
Sprout & Co: Community Driven Investigations
Greater Boston Solidarity Economy Mapping Project http://www.transformationcentral.org/solidarity/mapping/mapping.html
a project by Wellesley College students that invites participation, contact jmatthaei at wellesley.edu
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Bostonsmart.com's Guide to Boston http://www.bostonsmarts.com/BostonGuide/
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Links to events at 60 colleges and universities at Hubevents http://hubevents.blogspot.com
Thanks to
Fred Hapgood's Selected Lectures on Science and Engineering in the Boston Area: http://www.BostonScienceLectures.com
MIT Events: http://events.mit.edu
MIT Energy Club: http://www.mitenergyclub.org/calendar/mit_events_template
Harvard Events: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/harvard-events/events-calendar/
Harvard Environment: http://www.environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/
Sustainability at Harvard: http://green.harvard.edu/events
Mass Climate Action: http://www.massclimateaction.net/calendar/events/index.php
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/
Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/
Microsoft NERD Center: http://microsoftcambridge.com/Events/tabid/57/Default.aspx
Startup and Entrepreneurial Events: http://www.greenhornconnect.com/events/calendar
High Tech Events: http://harddatafactory.com/Johnny_Monsarrat/index.html
Cambridge Civic Journal: http://www.rwinters.com
Boston Area Computer User Groups: http://www.bugc.org/
Arts and Cultural Events List: http://aacel.blogspot.com/
Boston Events Insider: http://bostoneventsinsider.com/boston_events/
Nerdnite: http://boston.nerdnite.com/